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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


httos://archive.org/details/religionphilosop01 keit 


THE HARVARD ORIENTAL SERIES 


VOLUME THIRTY-ONE 


Tue volumes of the HarvarD ORIENTAL 
SERIEs are printed at the expense of funds 
given to Harvard University by Henry 
Clarke Warren (1854-1899), of Cambridge, 
Massachusetts. ‘The third volume, War- 
ren’s Buddhism, is a noble monument to his 
courage in adversity and to his scholarship. 
The Series, as a contribution to the work 
of enabling the Occident to understand the 
Orient, is the fruit of an enlightened libe- 
rality which now seems to have been an 
almost prophetic anticipation on his part 
of a great political need. 


A brief account of Mr. Warren’s life is given at the end 
of volume 30, Burlingame’s Buddhist Legends. The 
account is reprinted at the end of the seventh and eighth 
issues (1922) of volume 3, Warren’s Buddhism. 

A list of the volumes of this Series, with titles and 
descriptions, is printed at the end of volume 82, and 
is followed by a partial list of Public Libraries in which 
the Series may be found. 


7 Da 
caveat ei 


MAL cit 





“WARVARD ORIENTAL SERIES 


EDITED 
WITH THE COOPERATION OF VARIOUS SCHOLARS 
BY 
CHARLES ROCKWELL LANMAN 


Professor at Harvard University; Honorary Fellow of the Asiatic Society of 
Bengal, of France, of England, and of Germany ; Corresponding Member of the 
Society of Sciences at Gottingen, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the 
Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres of the Institute of France 


Volume Thirty-one 


4 


CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 


Harvard Cintversitpy yress 


LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 


1925 


An Ut Vey, > 
oe D>, 
OCT 29 1926 
hi < 

Logica sewer 






THE RELIGION AND 
PHILOSOPHY OF THE VEDA 
AND UPANISHADS 


BY 
ARTHUR BERRIEDALE KEITH 
DiG.E.) D:Lrrr: 


Of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law, and of the Scottish Bar; Regius 
Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology at the University 
of Edinburgh ; formerly of the Colonial Office 


ba 


The first half, Chapters 1-19 
Page 1 to page 312 


CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 


Harvard Ciniversitp press 


LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 


1925 


Keith’s Religion and Philosophy of the Veda was printed in 1925 
from monotype-matter, each of the two volumes in 2000 copies 





Printed (on paper made at its Wolvercote Mill) and bound 
at the University Press, Oxford, England 
by Frederick Hall, Printer to the University 


Rye 


Some other works by A. Berriedale Keith 


Sankhayana Aranyaka, trans., 1908. 

Aitareya Aranyaka, ed. and trans., 1909. 

Vedic Index of Names and Subjects (with A. A. Macdonell), 1912. 
The Veda of the Black Yajus School (H.O.S. 18 and 19), 1914. 
Indian Mythology (Mythology of All Races, vol. 6), 1917. 

The Samkhya System, 1918 (2nd ed., 1924). 

Rig-Veda Brahmanas (H.O.S. 25), 1920. 

Indian Logic and Atomism, 1921. 

The Karma Mimamsa, 1921. 

Buddhist Philosophy, 1923. 

Classical Sanskrit Literature, 1923. 

Sanskrit Drama, 1924. 


State Succession in International Law, 1907. 

Responsible Government in the Dominions, 1909 (2nd ed., 3 vols., 1912). 

Imperial Unity and the Dominions, 1916. 

Report on Home Administration of Indian Affairs (in Parliamentary Paper 
Cmd. 207), 1919. 

The Belgian Congo and the Berlin Act, 1919. 

The War Government of the Dominions, 1921. 

Dominion Home Rule in Practice, 1921. 

Conflict of Laws (with A. V. Dicey), 1922. 

The Constitution, Administration, and Laws of the Empire, 1924. 


TO 
MARY HINCKLEY LANMAN 


WIFE AND HELPMATE 
OF 


CHARLES ROCKWELL LANMAN 


PROFESSOR AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY 


NOTE FOR LIBRARIANS AND CATALOGUERS 


Tue Library of Congress issues printed catalogue-cards made to follow rules 
now generally approved by the best experts. The cards for this work bear 
the serial number 25—26743. Complete sets of these cards may be had 
(at a nominal price of 12 cents for each set of 8 or less) upon application to 
‘The Library of Congress, Card Division, Washington, D. C.’ But (to 
foreign librarians, at least) the suggestion may be welcome that this work 
be recorded in Library Catalogues under the following entries : 


Keith, Arthur Berriedale, 1879- (author) 

VEDAS (subject) 

UPANISHADS (subject) 

Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads (title) 
Harvard Oriental Series, v. 831-82 (series-title) 

Lanman, Charles Rockwell, 1850- (editor) 


PREFACE 


Ir is the object of this work to present to the student of religion, in 
objective form and with constant reference to the original sources and 
to modern discussions, a comprehensive but concise account of the 
whole of the religion and philosophy of the Vedic period.in India. The 
difficulty of the task lies not merely in the abundance of the original 
sources, which I have had occasion to study in detail in making my 
translations of the Taittiriya Sarnhita and the Brahmanas and the 
Aranyakas of the Rigveda, but also in the extreme divergence of view 
among modern interpreters of Vedic literature. Doubtless it is owing 
to this cause that the extraordinary value of Vedic religion to the 
student of religious belief has been so completely overlooked by Sir 
James Frazer and Professor S. Reinach in their theories of religion, 
and that it has been so gravely misinterpreted by Professor Sir William 
Ridgeway in his essays on the origin of the drama. The account of 
Vedic religion given in this work will, I trust, do something to restore to 
that religion its just place in the study of theology. 

The writer of such a work must at every turn derive much from 
his predecessors. An effort has been made to assign to their authors the 
most important of the theories mentioned, but I desire to acknowledge 
a more general obligation to certain scholars. In the treatment of the 
mythology I am deeply indebted to Professor A. A. Macdonell’s Vedic 
Mythology, which is not merely an invaluable and exhaustive storehouse 
of facts, but is distinguished by unfailing sureness and clearness of 
judgement, and I have derived much help from Bergaigne’s Religion 
Védique, Hillebrandt’s Vedische Mythologie, and Oldenberg’s Religion des 
Veda, though I have been unable to follow these authors in the more 
imaginative of their theories. For the ritual I owe many facts to Hille- 
brandt, Schwab, Caland, Henry, Weber, and last, but certainly not least, 
to my predecessor, Professor J. Eggeling. In its explanation I find 
myself often in agreement with Oldenberg, the brilliance and charm of 
whose work in this sphere can hardly be overestimated. I have made 
free use of the light cast on ritual by other religions, and I am conscious 
of having derived great profit from the works of Dr. L. R. Farnell ; 

[g.0.s. 31] a 3 


x Preface 


but neither the totemism of Durkheim or S. Reinach nor the vegetation- 
spirits of Mannhardt and Sir J. Frazer have helped me in my study of 
the Veda. For the philosophy of the Brahmanas and the Upanisads, 
Lévi, Oltramare, and Deussen have been of the greatest assistance 
through the completeness of the collections of material which they have 
made, and the fact that I have found it necessary to refuse to accept 
Deussen’s main theories must not be taken to indicate any lack of appre- 
ciation of the great merits of his work. Nor should I conclude without 
an expression of indebtedness to Roth, Max Miller, Whitney, Hopkins, 
Bloomfield, and to the untiring labours and accomplished scholarship of 
Professor Charles R. Lanman, who has added to the many obligations 
which I owe to him by permitting these volumes to appear in the 
Harvard Oriental Series, that monumentum aere perennius of his unselfish 
devotion to the study of the life and literature of India. 


A. BERRIEDALE KEITH. 


EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY, 
June 1, 1916. 


Nonumque prematur in annum. When the Preface to this work was 
written neither author nor editor imagined that war conditions would 
compel obedience to the Horatian maxim in so literal a fashion. In 
revising the work for press I have taken note, so far as was compatible 
with the necessity of avoiding the expansion of the work beyond due 
bounds, of those contributions to our knowledge made since 1916, 
which appeared to me of most value in respect either of the results 
attained or of the methods adopted. Recent work on the origin of 
religion I have not discussed, as I have found nothing in it to throw light 
on Vedic beliefs, and a criticism on general grounds would involve trans- 
gression of the limits of these volumes. 

I trust that nothing of first-class importance in the literature has 
escaped my attention ; if it has, some share of the blame must fall on the 
deplorably inadequate provision made for Sanskrit research in this 
University, as the result in part of public indifference, in part of the 
many insistent demands on strictly limited academic resources. It is 
deeply to be regretted that British opinion should be so heedless of the 
duty of contributing to the investigation of the ancient civilization of a 


Preface xi 


land whence Britain has derived so much of her power and wealth. But 
a sense of this inexcusable neglect only increases my sincere gratitude to 
the founder and the editor of the Harvard Oriental Series, whose 
enlightened and impartial generosity alone have rendered possible the 
publication of my studies on the religion and philosophy of the Veda. 

The delay in publication causes me one serious regret, that this work 
cannot now evoke the criticism of Hermann Oldenberg, that admirable 
scholar, to whose writings on Vedic religion and philosophy I desire once 
more—inane munus—to express my deep obligation. 

To my wife I owe sincere thanks for much help and criticism. Mr. 
Frederick Hall and his staff have, as always, spared no trouble in the 
production and printing of the volumes, and I desire to express my high 
appreciation of their efforts. 


THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, 
June 1, 1924. 





CONTENTS 


The twenty-nine chapters of this work are numbered, for practical con- 
venience, in one single arithmetical sequence. But they are grouped in five 
main divisions, or PARTS, as follows: 


PART CHAP, 
I. THE SOURCES (4 chapters, pages 1-57) . ; : é 1-4 


II. THE GODS AND DEMONS OF THE VEDA (12 chapters) 5-16 
III. VEDIC RITUAL (6 chapters, pages 252-402) . , . 17-22 
IV. THE SPIRITS OF THE DEAD (38 chapters, pages 403-4382) 23-25 


V. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE VEDA (4 chapters, pages 
AGS2618) hee) ene s RMRUN NEN Tonka 26-29 


Rey 


CONTENTS OF PART I.—THE SOURCES 


CHAP. PAGE 
“1. The Rigveda and the Aryans .°_. : , : ‘ d 1 
2. The later Samhitas and the Brahmanas ; : : : a i Me: 
3. The later literature . : : ; : : : aa Ae A 
4, The Avesta and Comparative Mythology . : é : ee OS 
§ 1. The Avesta . ; : ; yertae 
§ 2. Comparative Methottiy and Reb vion : : ‘ya BG 

§ 3. The origin of religion. ; ; ; ere: Vb 
§ 4. The mingling of races and Metres 4 ; ini! 
§ 5. Popular and hieratic religion . f , ; : edits, 


CONTENTS OF PART II.—THE GODS AND DEMONS OF 


THE VEDA 

/5. The nature of the Gods and Demons . : : ; : PLL be 
§ 1. Nature Gods and abstract Deities . 5 ‘ : en DS 

(a) Anthropomorphism . : ho aS 

(b) Theriomorphism and the worahip of Baines : Tol 

(c) Animatism, Sondergétter, and Abstract Deities. Oo 

§ 2. Fetishism . ; : P AST e i 2 i) 

§ 3. Animism and the pants ef the fend : | ‘ aw Anh 


§ 4. The term Deva . : : : : R : Fee ay fo) 


xiv 
CHAP. 


Contents of volume 31 


6. Vedic cosmology and cosmogony 
/7%. The interrelation of the Gods 
8. The Great Gods—Celestial 


DD MMMM mMm 
MD ANaAae w& 


9. Th 


CO? COD COP CO? (02 COD COR CO? (COD COD COD 


pat fem 
mH OO © 


IO oP O&O DO 


. Dyaus the Father 
. Varuna, Mitra, and the Adie 
. Sirya, Savitr, and Pisan 


Visnu 


. Vivasvant 


The Agcvins . 


.. The Goddess Dawn 
. The Moon 


reat Gods—Aerial 
. Indra 

. Trita Aptya 

. Apamh Napat _ 
. Ahi Budhnya 

. Aja Ekapad 

. Matari¢van . 


Vayu and Vata 


. Parjanya 

. The Waters 

. Rudra : 
. The Maruts or Panne ; 


10. The Great Gods—Terrestrial 


§ 2. 
§ 8. 
§ 4. 
§ 5. 
§ 6. 


. Agni : 
Brhaspati and ee fortis of Agni 
The God Soma . . 

The Rivers 

The Earth 

The Sea 


11. The Minor Gods of Nature 


§ 1 
§ 2 
§ 38 
§ 4 
§ 5 
§ 6 
anes 
§ 8 
§ 9 
§ 10 


. The Rbhus and the Rtus 

. The Gandharvas and Apsarases 

. Spirits of the Forest, the Trees, the Plants 
. Spirits of Agriculture, Pasture, and the Mountains . 
. Deities of the House 

. Divine Implements 

. Divine Animals 

. Totemism 

. The lesser Nature Godaerers 

. Constellations and Time Periods 


PAGE 


Contents of volume 31 


CHAP, 
12. Abstract Deities and Sondergétter 


§ 1. The nature of Abstract Deities 
§ 2. Tvastr and other Agent Gods 
§ 3. The Creator Gods 

§ 4. Subjective Deities 

§ 5. Deified states or conditions 

§ 6. Aditi and Diti 

§ 7. The wives of the Gods 


13. Groups of Deities 
§ 1. Dual Divinities 
§ 2. Groups of Gods 


14. Priests and Heroes 
§ 1. The Priests of the fire-cult 
§ 2. Other ancient Priests 
§ 3. Warriors : : 
§ 4. The First of Men . 


15. The Demons 


§ 1. The Enemies of the Gods 
§ 2. The Enemies of Man 


v16. The Gods and their worshippers 


CONTENTS OF PART III.—VEDIC RITUAL 


17. The ritual in the Rigveda 


18. The nature of the Vedic sacrifice 


y§ 1. The sacrifice as a gift 
_§ 2. The sacrifice as a spell 


§ 3. The removal of sin by sacrifice and magic 
§ 4. Communion and sacrament in the sacrifice 
§ 5. The materials of the sacrifice . 


§ 6. Fire and the sacrifice 
§ 7. The performers of the sacrifice 


19. Rites ancillary to the sacrifice 
§ 1. The consecration 
§ 2. The Avabhrtha 
§ 3. Taboos 
§ 4. The forms of prayer 


XV 
PAGE 
203 


203 
204 
206 
210 
211 
215 
218 


220 
220 
221 
223 


223 
226 
228 
228 


231 


231 
236 


243 


xvi 


Contents of volume 32 


At this point occurs the break between Chapters 1-19 and Chapters 20-29 


CHAP. 


The latter group is bound up as volume 32 


20. The sacrifices of the Crauta ritual 


COP CO? COR LN CL UW WM WM CG WM 


| 


unr wor 
i 
bh = 


So WWD oe wD 


. General characteristics . 

. Establishment and re- Seata DHGHINEn of te Ares 
. The Fire-god oblation or Agnihotra 

. The new-moon and full-moon sacrifices . 


The four-month or seasonal sacrifices 
First-fruit sacrifice (Agrayana isti) and others . 


. The animal sacrifice 

. The Soma sacrifice 

. The Pravargya or hot-milk paerifide 

. The Aikadacina animal offering 

. Other forms of Jyotistoma 

. Other Soma sacrifices of one day’s Rirauen 
§ 13. 
§ 14. 
§ 15. 
§ 16. 
SeL7. 
§ 18. 
§ 19. 
§ 20. 
§ 21. 
§ 22. 


The Vajapeya or drink-of-strength 
The royal consecration 4 
The horse sacrifice 

The human sacrifice 

Other Ahina rites 

The Sattras or sacrificial sessions 
The Sautrémani . 

The piling of the fire- alts 

The Hotr formulae 

Expiations . 


21. The domestic ritual . 


$1. 
§ 2. 
§ 3. 
§ 4. 
§ 5. 


General character of the domestic sacrifices 
The various offerings 

Birth-ceremonies and others 

Studentship 

Marriage 


22. Magic in the ritual 


. The relations of magic to religion 
. The nature of Vedic magic 

. The removal of hostile influences 
. The attraction of beneficial substances aan powers 
. Mimetic magic 

. Divination and ordeal 
. The magic spell 

. The magic sacrifice 

. Yoga practices 


PAGE 
313 


313 
316 
318 
319 
321 
323 
324 
326 
332 
333 
334 
336 
339 
340 
343 
347 
348 
349 
352 
354 
356 
356 


358 


358 
359 


Contents of volume 32 


xvii 


CONTENTS OF PART IV.—THE SPIRITS OF THE DEAD 


CHAP. 


23. The abodes of the dead 


ab 
§ 2. 
§ 8. 


The nature of the dead 
The places of the dead 
The transmutation of the ea 


24. The disposal of the dead . 


25. The cult of the dead 
§ 1. The living and the dead 


§ 2. 


The offerings to the dead in the Aomestie rete 


§ 3. The offerings to the dead in the Crauta ritual 


PAGE 


403 


403 
406 
415 


417 


425 
425 
427 
429 


CONTENTS OF PART V.—THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE VEDA 
26. The beginnings of Vedic Philosophy . 


27. The Theosophy of the Brahmanas 


ae 
§ 2. 
§ 3. 
§ 4. 
§ 5. 


The general character of the Brahmana posh 
The highest principle of the universe 

The theory of the sacrifice 

The ethics of the Brahmanas 

Modes of thought and categories 


28. The Philosophy of the Upanisads 


Cr LO? LO? LP LOR WO? 
Noarans 


29. Greece 


. The origin of the Upanisads . 

. The extant Upanisads . 

. The interpretation of the eed 

. The problem and conditions of knowledge 
. The nature of the Absolute . 

. The Absolute and the Universe 

. Maya and Prakrti—TIllusion and Nacurel 


(a) Illusion . 
(b) Nature } 
(c) The origin of ‘he Samkhye and Baddniern : 


. The Supreme and the Individual Souls . 
. The four states of the Soul 

. The doctrine of transmigration 

. The way of salvation 

. The ethics of the Upanisads and Yoo : 
. The significance of the philosophy of the Upanisads 


and the philosophy of India 


433 


440 
440 
442 
454 
468 
482 


489 


489 
497 
507 
513 
516 
522 
529 
529 
532 
535 
551 
567 
570 
581 
584 
592 


601 


X Vill Contents of Appendix 


APPENDIX 

PAGE 

A. The age of the Avesta and the Rigveda . ; : ; . 614 
B. The sacrifice of Purusa and the origin of the world . E Cle 
C. The Aryan conception of the heaven : : . ‘ i ROAL 
D. The drink of immortality : { : : ; ; . 628 
EK. The Indo-European fire-cult . ; : : : : . 625 
F. Cremation and burial. : : ; ; : E - 626 
G. The Dravidian element in Indian thought : d Oo 2o 
H. Pythagoras and Parmenides . : : : ; - 634 
GENERAL INDEX . ; : ‘ 5 ‘ 5 - 639 


SANSKRIT INDEX . : 3 : ‘ : ; : , OF 5 


TRANSLITERATION 


The system of transliteration adopted by W. D. Whitney in his Sanskrit 
Grammar and C, R. Lanman in his Sanskrit Reader has been followed. For 
purposes of pronunciation the vowels may be treated as in Italian, but a is 
analogous to the sound in English ‘but’. The consonants may be pro- 
nounced as in English, the diacritical marks being ignored, except in the 
following cases: c is similar to ch in church: ¢ and s are approximately sh 
in shun: s is always surd as in sun: m or % is a nasalization of the preceding 
vowel: the aspirates like th are pronounced approximately like th in pothook. 
The letter 7 may be taken as nearly rz. Similarly / is li or Irt. 


The complete alphabet is as follows: vowels: a&diiuarrleaioau; 


gutturals: k kh g gh fi; palatals :" ¢“chity jhy fs 

domals : Tee Lite whee Tes dentals 7) -tiethwd)- dhe 1: 

labials : abe mgelee Mou Mes nya Ganae semivowels: yrlv; further: nh mh. 
ABBREVIATIONS 

AA. Aitareya Aranyaka. Kaus. Kausitaki Upanisad. 

AB. Aitareya Brahmana. Kena. Kena Upanisad (=JUB. 4, 18-21). 

AGS. Acvalayana Grhya Sitra. KhGS. Khadira Grhya Sitra. 

ACS. Acvalayana Crauta Sitra. LOS. Latyayana Crauta Sitra. 

AU. Aitareya Upanisad(=AA.2.4-6). MB. Mantra Brahmana. 

AV. Atharvaveda. MGS. Manava Grhya Sitra. 

AV.Par. Atharvaveda Paricista. MP. Mantrapatha. 

ApDS. Apastamba Dharma Sitra. MCS. Manava Crauta Sutra. 

ApGSs. Apastamba Grhya Sitra. MS. Maitrayani Samhita. 

Ap¢s. Apastamba Crauta Sitra. Mahanar. Mahanarayana Upanisad. 

BAU. Brhadaranyaka Upanisad. Maitr. Maitrayaniya Upanisad. 

BDS. Baudhayana Dharma Sitra. Mund. Mundaka Upanisad. 

BGS. Baudhayana Grhya Sitra. Nir. Nirukta. 

BCS. Baudhayana Crauta Sitra. PB. Pancavinea Brahmana. 

BhGS. Bharadvaja Grhya Sitra. PGS. Paraskara Grhya Sitra. 

CU. Chandogya Upanisad. PU. Pracgna Upanisad. 

GB. Gopatha Brahmana. RV. Rigveda. 

GDS. Gautama Dharma Sitra. CA. Cankhayana Aranyaka. 

GGS. Gobhila Grhya Sitra. CB. Catapatha Brahmana. 

HGS. Hiranyakeg¢i Grhya Sitra. CGS. . Cankhayana Grhya Sitra. 

HCS. Hiranyakeci Crauta Siitra. ccs. Cankhayana Crauta Sitra. 

Tea. Ica Upanisad (=VS. xl). CU. Cvetacvatara Upanisad. 

JB. Jaiminiya Brahmana. SVB. Samavidhana Brahmana. 

JGS. Jaiminiya Grhya Sitra. TA. Taittiriya Aranyaka. 

JUB. Jaiminiya Upanisad Brahmana. ‘TB. Taittiriya Brahmana. 

KB. Kausitaki Brahmana. Abs) Taittiriya Samhita. 

KCS. Katyayana Crauta Sitra. TU. Taittiriya Upanisad. 

KS. Kathaka Samhita. VS. Vajasaneyi Samhita. 

KU. Katha Upanisad. Vait. Vaitana Sitra. 


Kaug. Kaucika Sitra. VarGS. Varaha Grhya Sitra. 





yi af 


At 
4 


ae 


PART I. THE SOURCES 


CHAPTER 1 
THE RIGVEDA AND THE ARYANS 


Tue oldest and most important of the sources for Indian religion is the 
collection of 1,028 hymns known as the Rigveda Samhita, which has been 
handed down to us in the Cakala recension. Preserved in its early stages by 
oral tradition and long regarded as too sacred to be reduced to writing, the 
text affords abundant internal proof of the general accuracy with which it 
was preserved. Moreover, an invaluable form of control exists in the texts 
of the other Vedas, the Yajurveda in its different recensions, the Samaveda, 
and the Atharvaveda, all of which contain much of the matter of the Rigveda. 
The older view, that in these texts might be found traces of earlier forms of 
the verses of the Rigveda, has not borne close examination and comparison 
in detail :1 witha very few possible exceptions the variations which are found 
in these texts from the Rigveda can be unhesitatingly classed as products 
either of an inferior tradition on the one hand or of deliberate alteration on 
the other. Similarly the efforts which have been made by Hillebrandt ? to 
prove that, in a stage earlier than that recorded, the Rigveda was a definitely 
practical collection of hymns, arranged according to their connexion with the 
sacrificial ritual, must be pronounced to have failed. Whereas all the other 
Samhitas, except the Atharvaveda, which occupies a peculiar position, are 
definitely in their non-Brahmana portions manuals of the chants and formulae 
used by the priests in the ritual, the Rigveda is not a practical but a historical 
hand-book. It must represent a collection of hymns made by unknown hands 
at a time when for some unrecorded reason it was felt desirable to preserve the 
religious poetry current among the Vedic tribes. 

The collection must have been made from a considerable area of country, 
for it contains hymns emanating from very varied families. Tradition 
ascribes to books ii to vii as authors the seers Gautama, Vicvamitra, Vama- 
deva, Atri, Bharadvaja, and Vasistha, but this view cannot be taken quite 
literally : the hymns themselves reveal abundant evidence that, for the most 
part at least, they were not composed by these personages, but by men 
claiming to be of the families bearing their names, and the family character of 
the hymns in these books is in the main clear. With these six books must be 


4 Oldenberg, Prolegomena, pp. 289 ff.; cf. Rgveda gemeinsamen Siellen (1909). 
Bloomfield, Rig-Veda Repetitions, p. * ZDMG. xl. 708; GGA. 1889, pp. 418 ff. 
406; Brune, Zur Textkritik der dem * Oldenberg, GGA.1907, pp. 211 ff. ; Keith, 
Sdmaveda mit dem VIII Mandala des JRAS. 1908, pp. 224-9. 


1 _[nos. 1] 


2 The Sources [Part 1 


classed the groups of hymns ascribed to different families or authors in book i, 
51-191, and this may have been the extent of the oldest collection made, 
though it is perhaps more likely that 1. 51-191 were collected later than ii—vii. 
The earlier portion of book i and the whole of book viii are ascribed to seers of 
the Kanva family; it would appear that these two separate collections were at 
some time added, the one in front of, and the other after, the existing Samhita, 
but which addition was first made there is no clear ground to show.1_ When the 
collection had reached the compass of seven or eight books, another, now the 
ninth, was created by extracting from the other books all the hymns addressed 
to Soma Pavamana, that is the Soma as it was poured through the filter, 
which were then united into one group: for this change no reason is obvious.” 
This did not, however, end the history of the collection: at a time when 
the nine books had already taken form, a tenth was added, consisting on the 
whole of more recent hymns.? The late character of this book can be estab- 
lished by a number of proofs. Its extent, 191 hymns, has obviously been 
brought up to that of book i; the language shows development in different 
aspects: hiatus becomes rarer, old words like the particle stm disappear, 
new words and forms are found, and the metre shows affinities with the metre 
| of the later Sammhitas. The same result is indicated by the new features 
| in religion which appear : the Dawn, the most poetic of Indian goddesses, all 
but disappears, Varuna, most moral and spiritual of Vedic deities, loses in 
| position, while Indra, the Indian god par excellence, and Agni, the priestly 
| god of fire, retain all their importance. The more or less abstract conception 
| of the All-gods increases in importance, and real abstract deities appear in 
Faith and Wrath. The growth of religious thought is also shown by the 
| occurrence of philosophical and cosmogonic hymns, and in imitation of the 
| hymns to the gods the wedding and funeral services are now provided with 
elaborate hymnologies in place of the more simple formulae which were 
doubtless earlier in use.4 The book shows also the employment of hymns for 
spells and incantations, and here again we must doubtless see the application 
to the lower side of life of the instrument devised primarily to placate the high 
gods. The advance in religion is paralleled by the advance in society : in this 
book we for the first time meet the fully developed system of the four castes 
or classes, Brahman, warrior, clansman, and Cidra. 
It is naturally tempting to seek to carry the process of dissection further, 
and to discover the different ages of the several portions of the Rigveda. 


1 That viii had no claim to age was indicated ever, suggests that i-viii already 
by Hopkins, JAOS. xvii. 23 ff., and is existed. 
confirmed by the evidence of repeti- * Oldenberg, Prolegomena, pp. 263 ff. 
tions, Bloomfield, Rig-Veda Repetitions, ‘4 Contrast Bloomfield, op. cit., pp. 21, 649, 


pp. 640 ff. who holds that x. 14. 14 and 15. 14 are 
2 ix is usually superior to viii (Bloomfield, later than i. 15. 9; 108. 12, but neither 
p- 644). As new books were added, the case is convincing. The wedding hymn 
Soma Pavamiana hymns were added to is clearly late ; x. 85.18 echoes i. 108.1, 


what is nowix. Its position as ix, how- based on vii. 61. 1. 


Chap. 1] The Rigveda and the Aryans 3 


Within the groups it is often possible to prove introduction of later material 
by the violation of the rules of order adopted by the compilers of the collection, 
but differences of age among the groups themselves and between individual 
hymns, which are not marked out as foreign to the groups in which they are 
found, cannot yet be established. The most elaborate attempt made of late to 
find strata in the Rigveda is that of Prof. Arnold,? who by the test of metre 
divides the collection into five layers which cut sharply across the traditional 
grouping; but his criteria are clearly unsound,? and depend on a purely 
hypothetical reconstruction of the metrical history of the hymns, to which 
objection can be taken on many grounds. Moreover, the results thus attained 
render any intelligible account of the development of Vedic religion impossible : 
the hymns to Dawn are certainly the most beautiful and least sacerdotal of all 
those of the Rigveda, and, for this reason and because in the later cult Dawn 
has but a small place, it is natural to assign them to the earliest period of 
Indian hymnology. The same conclusion is also indicated by the fact that 
this view alone harmonizes with the probable movements of the Vedic Indians. 
There can be little doubt that the bulk of the hymns cannot have been pro- 
duced, as was formerly thought, in the Punjab, where the phenomena of the 
rains are poor and uninteresting and could not have given rise to the remark- 
able stress laid on these natural features by the Vedic poets in their concep- 
tions of Indra and the Maruts. We must seek for the main home of the Vedic 
Indian in the country afterwards famous as Kuruksetra, between the rivers 
Sarasvati, now Sarstti, and Drsadvati, probably the modern Chitang, 
and in the region of Ambala, and the oldest hymns only, those to Dawn, can 
reasonably be supposed to have been composed while the invaders were still 
in the land of the five rivers.t But Prof. Arnold is forced by his metrical tests 
to ascribe the importance of the Dawn and of the deities, sky and earth, which, 
like the Dawn, seem among the oldest, to a secondary state of the Vedic 
religion, when Dawn and sky and earth were not revered for themselves, but 
because of their connexion with the fire ritual, dawn being the time of sacrifice 
and the fire serving as a pillar to join heaven and earth, but yet to keep them 
asunder, while in the earliest period he sets Indra, the warrior god. 

\ If we cannot hope to reach any assured results as regards the different 
strata in the Rigveda itself, it remains to be seen what date can be ascribed to 
ithe Rigveda asa whole. The Samhita is absolutely lacking in reference to any 
historical event which we can date. It had indeed been sought time after 
time to demonstrate the contrary, but no such attempt has yet approached 
plausibility. Ludwig ® in an elaborate examination of the question decided 


1 Oldenberg, Prolegomena (1888) and decide relative dates. 
Rgveda-Noten (1909-12). 5’ Keith, JRAS. 1906, pp. 486-90, 718-22 ; 
2 Vedic Metre (1905). Contrast Bloomfield, 1912, pp. 726-9. 
Rig-Veda Repetitions, pp. 535 ff., 640, * Hopkins, JAOS. xix.19; cf. Keith, CHI. 
687, for the use of grammatical, lexical, i. 80 ff. 


metrical, ritual, sense, and other con- ° Proc. Bohem. Acad, 1885. 
siderations as to repeated passages to 


LS 


4 The Sources [Part I 


that from the mention of two eclipses in the Rigveda could be deduced a date 
of the eleventh century B.c. for the hymns in which these phenomena were 
mentioned, but this suggestion has been totally disproved by Whitney.! 
An alleged reference to the capture of Babylon by Aryan tribes which might 
be brought into connexion with the advent of the Kassite dynasty at Babylon 
in the eighteenth century B. c. is a wild guess of Brunnhofer,? which it is quite 
impossible seriously to consider. Much more substantial are the arguments 
adduced by Prof. Jacobi * who sees traces of evidence that the Rigveda goes 
back as far as the third millennium s.c. He thinks that the Rigveda shows 
that the winter solstice took place in the month Phalguna, and on the ground 
of the precession of the equinoxes this must mean that the observation thus 
recorded was made in the third millennium B.c. This view, which rests on 
the interpretation of a very doubtful passage in the Rigveda,* he supports ® 
by the fact that in the Grhya Siitras, or manuals of domestic ritual, of much 
later date, the ceremonial of the wedding includes an injunction to the wife 
to look at the star called Dhruva, ‘ fixed ’, and this can only have originated 
at the time when a Draconis was in the vicinity of the pole, there being no other 
star which could be called fixed at any period coincident with the probable age 
of the Rigveda : further he contends that the fact that Krttikas, the Pleiades, 
are placed at the head of the list of twenty-seven or twenty-eight Naksatras, 
‘Junar mansions,’ in the Yajurveda and Atharvaveda Samhités means 
_ that Krttikas marked the vernal equinox when the list was compiled, and this 
date fell in the third millennium B.c. The first of these arguments seems 
clearly to be based on a misunderstanding of the Rigvedic passage in question ; ® 
the argument from the pole star assumes an accuracy in the demands of the 
primitive Indian wedding ritual which is wholly unnatural ; and the assump- 
tion that the Krttikas coincided with the vernal equinox is most improbable, 
if we are to regard the Naksatras as an Indian invention, since the equinoxes 
play otherwise no part in early Indian ideas, and if, as is far more probable, the 
Naksatras were borrowed from some other nation, then the period when 
Krttikas were chosen as the head is without relevance to the date of Indian 
literature.’ 


1 JAOS. xiii. pp. Ixi-Ixvi. 


* Iran und Turan, p. 221. 

’ Festgruss an Roth, pp. 68 ff.; GN. 1894, 
p. 110; ZDMG. xlix. 218 ff. ; 1. 69 ff. ; 
JRAS. 1909, pp. 721-6 ; 1910, pp. 456- 
64. 

SE OOO se ViexIV leo: 

A somewhat similar view is found in 
B. G, Tilak’s The Orion (1893) and The 
Arctic Home in the Vedas. Cf. Biihler, 
IA. xxiii. 238 ff. Contrast A. C. Das, 
Rig-Vedic India, i. 356 ff. 

*° The argument involves (1) the deduction 

from RV. vii. 103. 9 that the year began 


with the summer solstice, and (2) from 
x. 85. 13 that the marriage of the sun 
in the Phalgunis must fall at the be- 
ginning of the year, i.e. the summer 
solstice. Both views are most im- 
plausible ; in vii. 103. 9 that dvuddacdsya 
means * year ’ is practically certain, and 
thus ruins the whole structure of con- 
jecture. 

7 Oldenberg, ZDMG. xlviii. 629 ff.; xlix. 
470 ff.; 1.450 ff.; JRAS. 1909, pp. 
1090-5 ; GN. 1909, pp. 544 ff.; Thi- 
baut, IA. xxiv. 85 ff.; Whitney, JAOS. 
xvi. pp. Ixxxi ff.; Keith, JRAS. 1909, 


Chap. 1] The Rigveda and the Aryans 5 


We are compelled therefore to content ourselves in the main with internal 
evidence. There is, however, one point of interest arising from the discoveries 
at Boghaz-K@6i,! where among gods invoked by the King of the Mitanni are 
found names suggestive of the gods Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and the Nasatyas, 
i. e. the two Acvins, who often bear that name or epithet in the Rigveda. The 
existence of these gods seems, therefore, established for a period which may be 
placed about 1400 B.c., but unfortunately there is nothing in the record to 
show decisively whether these gods are to be regarded as the gods of an Aryan 
people, no clear separation of Iranian and Indian yet having taken place, or of 
the proto-Iranians, or of the proto-Indians. From the names of kings of the 
Mitanni preserved in the Tell-el-Amarna letters,” it has been deduced that 
there were proto-Iranian elements among the Mitanni, and this possibility is 


not to be denied, though it is at least certain that the people were not a pure | 
Aryan race. But in view of its uncertain value no direct light can be thrown 


on the age of the Rigveda either in its earliest or its latest form. <A priori 
it is clear that the gods must have existed before the hymns, and there is 
nothing special about the grouping of the gods as found at Boghaz-K6i which 
would justify us in holding that the pantheon had by that time assumed the 
definite form which it takes in the Rigveda, and that the Rigveda must then 


pp. 1095-1100; 1910, pp. 465-8; 
Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Indea, i. 
420-81; Keith, Taitttirtya Samhita, 
i. pp. clix ff. ; JRAS. 1917, pp. 135 ff. ; 
Lehmann-Haupt, ZDMG. Ixiii. 717. 

1 Winckler, MDOG. Dec. 1907; Jacobi 
JRAS. 1909, pp. 721-6; Meyer, SBA. 
1908, pp. 14ff.; KZ. xlii. 16 ff.; 


hazkoi-Inschriften (1919), holds that the 
Chatti were non-Indo-Europeans ruled 
by persons of quasi-Indo-European 
origin, speaking a centum language, 
while the Charri were also non-European 
under rulers speaking a satem language 
of Indian, not Iranian type (Jensen, 
Indische Zahlwoérter in keilschrifthit- 


2 Bloomfield, AJP. xxv. 8; 


Gesch. des Alt2 II. i. p. 652; Keith, 
Bhandarkar Comm. Volume, pp. 81-92 ; 
Winternitz, Gesch. der ind. Lit. iii. 621 f. 
Hall, Anc. 
Hist. of Near East, pp. 201, 331. Accor- 
ding to Winckler (OL. xiii. 291 ff.) 
the Aryan element bore the name 
Charri ; the Susian version of Darius’s 
inscriptions has Harriya for Aryan ; 
their followers are named marianni, in 
which may be seen the Vedic marya, 
with suffix dna; cf. Leumann, Zur 
nordarischen Sprache und Literatur, 
pp. 5ff. The theory is carefully 
ertticized by W. E. Clark, Am. Journ. 
Sem. Lang. xxxiii. 261-82. Since then 
much evidence has been accumulated, 
without decisive result. Hrozny (Keil- 
schrifttexte aus Boghazkéi and Volker 
- und Sprachen des alten Chatti-Landes), 
agreeing in considerable measure with 
EK. Forrer, Die acht Sprachen der Bog- 


titischen Texten, Berlin, 1919). The 
efforts from the numerals and names 
to establish Indian rulers, as opposed 
to Iranian or Aryan, are not convincing, 
as we simply have no evidence of early 
Iranian, and the process of restoring the 
Avesta to its true form, undertaken 
by Andreas and Wackernagel, is still 
unfinished. The form Assara Mazas of 
Assurbanipal’s record, pointing to 
a much earlier . borrowing, possibly 
during the Kassite dominion in Baby- 
lon, is clearly not Indian, and, while it 
may be Aryan, it is possible that it is 
proto-Iranian ; cf. Hommel, PSBA. 
1899, pp. 127, 138 f.; Geographie und 
Geschichte des alten Orients, p. 204; 
Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, pp. 
423 f.; Konow, JRAS. 1911, pp. 41 ff., 
argues that the Mitanni names are early 
Iranian. Cf. CAH. i. 311f., 469, 553; 
Forrer, ZDMG. Ixxvi. 250 ff. 


6 The Sources [Part I 


have existed. Still less importance attaches to the occurrence of a name like 
Surias (perhaps Sirya, the sun) in Kassite records, which leads Meyer to the 
conclusion that the Kassi were originally settled in Media and driven west by 
Aryan tribes. 

The internal evidence is more satisfactory, if less definite. It is practically 
certain that the Rigveda was to all intents and purposes complete before the 
_ other Satbhitas came into being, and it is certainly anterior to the whole of the 
| other literature of India, which presupposes it and takes it as given. With this 
fact accords its language, which is much more archaic than the language 
of the other early literature of India, and its metre, which has only emerged 
from the simplest form in which the number of syllables in each line was the 
sole mark of differentiation of verse from prose. For reasons which are given 
in the next chapter it is impossible to suppose that the later Samhitas date 
substantially if at all after 800 B.c., and this may probably be taken as the 
lowest possible date for the completion of the Rigveda. The real difficulty 
arises in deciding how much farther back the collection is to be carried, and in 
this regard it is probably necessary to beware of exaggeration.” There are 
many references in the Rigveda to former poets, and unquestionably, as we 
have seen, there was a distinct development of language and thought during 
the period of its production. But to allow too extended a time for the process 
of development and decline—for it is clear that the end of the period saw the 
passing from favour of original composition of hymns—is unnecessary, and 
there are two distinct grounds against adopting any such view. In the first 
place the poets never attain any very great command of their material, 
whether in language or metre, though in certain cases poetic results are 
attained by simple means.2 To the end the structure of the sentences remains 
naive and simple, and, when the poet seeks to compass more elaborate thought, 
his power of expression seriously fails him: it can hardly be supposed that 
in a period of many centuries the Vedic poet’s control over his instruments of 
expression would not have risen superior to the difficulties which faced him. 
In the second place, if the Rigveda is put as far back as 1500 B. c., it becomes 
very difficult to explain the extremely close parallelism between the speech of 
the Avesta and that of the Rigveda, especially if the traditional date (660-588 


* In CHI. i. 65 ff. the case for a western germanen, i. 22) places the migrations 
home of the Indo-Europeans is stated late. Cf. Ipsen, IF. xli. 174 ff. 
by Dr. P. Giles, who would clearly place * Bloomfield (Religion of the Veda, p. 20) 
the invasion of India after 1500 B.c. prefers 2000 B.c. for the beginnings. 
The eastern theory is defended by But in Rig-Veda Repetitions (pp. 20, 21) 
Feist, Indogermanen und Germanen he stresses the absence of archetype 
(1919). Carnoy (Les Indo-Européens, hymns and the epigonal character of the 
pp. 55 ff.) decides for the Dnieper region. collection (cf. JAOS. xxix. 287), and in 
On Kassite names see Bloomfield, AJP. the earlier work he accepts 1600 B. c. in 
xxv. 1-14. The western home is lieu of 1400 B.C. as the Mitanni date. 


supported by von Schroeder, Arische * Macdonell, Hymns from the Rigveda (1922), 
Religion, i. 214 ff. Hirt (Die Indo- pp. 17 f. 


Chap. 1] The Rigveda and the Aryans 7 
B.C.) of Zoroaster is accepted.' It is possible to diminish the force of this 
objection by postulating an earlier epoch for Zoroaster ; ? but, even so, it is 
very doubtful whether the prophet can be carried far enough back to make 
any earlier date than 1200 B.c. or 1300 B.c.3 for the Rigveda reasonably 
probable. If we seek to ascribe a higher date than this, we must recognize 
that we are dealing with conjectures for which no very substantial evidence 
can be adduced. 

A very serious difficulty, it must be added, presents itself in the way of the 
early dating of the Rigveda in the shape of the fact that it seems very dubious 
whether we can place at all early the period of the dispersal of the Indo- 
Europeans or of the Indo-Iranians. If the Rigveda belongs to even 2000 B.c. 
we must assume that the Indo-Iranians parted at some date decidedly before 
that epoch, and there certainly seems every reason, arguing from general 
_ probabilities, not to place the entrance of the Aryans into India substantially 
before 1600 B.c.,4 and the process was probably one of long duration and slow 
accomplishment, 

A proof of the long connexion of the Indians and the Iranians before the 
latter settled definitely in India is seen by Hillebrandt ° in certain names in the | 
Rigveda, which incidentally in this view aid us in assigning an earlier date 
to certain hymns at least of the sixth book, composed in Arachosia. This view 
involves the identification of the Panis not with mythological figures but with 
the Parnians, of the name Parthava with the Parthians, the Dasas with the 
Dahae, the river Sarasvati with the Iranian Harahvaiti, the Hariyipiya with 
the Iryab or Haliab, a tributary of the Krumu, and the Arjikiya with a name 
connected with Arsakes, while Brbu Taksan, the enemy of the Panis, is 
brought into connexion with the later city of Taksacila, which may represent 
an eastern settlement of a tribe originally situated further to the west. 
Against this view, however, there are two serious objections. The identifica- 
tions are all of the most dubious character,® and, even if they were genuine, 
it would be difficult to make out any chronological result from them, seeing 
that other possibly Iranian names occur in other books of the Rigveda, such 
as Sriijaya and Paravata in several books, Drbhika in book ii, Srbinda in viii,’ 
Parcu and Tirindira in viii. 


1 Jackson, Zoroaster, pp. 150 ff.; Prasek, 
Gesch. der Meder, i. 204 ff. ; West, SBE. 
xIvii. p. xxviii; cf. Hertel, IQ. i. 7 ff. 

* Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, p. 18; 


Geldner, Enc. Brit. xxi. 2463; xxviii. 


1041; Bartholomae, Altir. Worterbuch, 
p- 1675; Keith, JRAS. 1915, pp. 798, 
799; Peters, JAOS. xxxi. 378; Jackson, 
CHI. i. 323. 

* Macdonell, Hymns from the Rigveda, p. 7. 

* Cf. Morgan, Les premiéres civilisations, 
pp. 264 ff., 314; J.L. Myres, The Dawn 
of History, pp.189 ff.; Kennedy, JRAS. 


1909, p. 1119. 

> Ved. Myth. i. 83 ff.; iii. 268; (KI. Ausg.), 
pp. 95, 114, 191f.; GGA. 1894, pp. 
648 if. 

6 See Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Index, 
1. 29, 349, 357, 450, 504 f., 518 f., 521 f. ; 
li. 47057) Kerth; CHI? 1; 861. The 
obvious possibilities of mere parallelism 
of name between India and Iran seem 
sometimes ignored (cf. Jackson, CHI. 
i. 322). Parcgavas is certainly not a 
proper name in x, 33. 2. 

7 Brunnhofer, Jran und Turan, p. 122. 


8 The Sources [Part I 


It is, however, an interesting question 1 how far there can be traced in the 
Rigveda evidence of closer connexions with Iran on the part of some of the 
families of poets, even if, as is doubtless proper, we reject the suggestions of 
Hillebrandt which would make certain of the hymns of the Rigveda (book vi) 
a product of the time when the seers dwelt beyond Indian limits proper. Here 
again, however, we must be contented in large measure with a negative 
result. Thus it has been suggested that we are to see special closeness of 
connexion in the case of book viii, on the strength of the occurrence of 
such names as the Gomati, Suvastu, Asikni, Parusni, and the hostile aspect 
in which the Gandharva is viewed,” contrary to the usual honourable position 
occupied by that spirit. Arjika or Arjikiya is also cited as pointing to some 
Iranian locality. This, however, as has been said, is uncertain,® and the most 
certain indication of Iranian influence, the form titawi with an unparalleled | 
hiatus, is found in book x, other alleged instances of such influence being 
most dubious. 

It may, however, be noted that from the Iranian side the suggestion has 

been made that the Tir Ya8st represents an Indian phenomenon, the breaking of 
the south-west monsoon, which has no Iranian parallel. Hope Moulton ® 
connected this view with the appearance of gods, whom he regarded as Indian, 
among the Mitanni, thus arriving at the conjecture of a movement back out of 
India on the part of tribes which had become dissatisfied with conditions 
there, but carried traditions with them. Indo-Iranian relations might account 
for the phenomenon adequately, but the whole matter is too conjectural to 
yield any assured result. 

The Rigveda is not, therefore, among the oldest literary monuments of the 
world viewed merely from the point of date, but its extent, which is com- 
parable with that of the Iliad and the Odyssey put together, and the practically 
exclusively religious character of its contents, make it unique in its revelation 
of the religion of the Vedic tribes. Of the condition of life of these tribes com- 
paratively little is made known to us, but there is enough to show that the 
people were divided up among small kingdoms, under hereditary princes, 
often engaged in war among themselves and still more often involved in 
conflicts with the ‘ dark skins ’, over whom they seem normally to have been 
victorious, perhaps as a result of the body armour which they wore, and the 
spears and battle-axes of metal—copper, or later iron—which, with the 
bow, formed their chief weapons in war. They were not merely a pastoral but 
also an agricultural people, but there is no clear trace of a town life: the 
forts, which both they and the aborigines owned, were doubtless nothing 
more than places of refuge, with ramparts of mud or wood, used both in time 


1 Cf. Hillebrandt, Aus alten und Neuindien blematic. 
(1922), pp. 8 ff.; Hopkins, JAOS. xvii. * Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Indez, i. 62 f. = 
73 ff. See also below, Part II, Chap. 15, Stein, Bhandarkar Comm. Vol., p. 27. 
$1 as to Asura. * Cf. Wackernagel, Altind. Gramm. i. § 37. 
* RV. viii. 1. 11. In Iran his parallel 1 (0). 


is a demon, but the suggestion is pro- *° Early Zoroastrianism, pp. 25 f., 486 f. 


Chap. 1] The Rigveda and the Aryans 9 
of war and in time of flood.t_ The richness in gold, which is characteristic of 
the age, may be compared with the wealth of the Aegean civilization of Crete, 
but there is no trace of the artistic spirit of the Aegean pre-Hellenic people. 
Nor is there any sign that large kingdoms had yet appeared : confederations 
of tribes, such as that of the famous five peoples, Anus, Pirus, Druhyus, 
Turvacas, and Yadus, might exist, and we hear even of a battle of ten kings, 
but these were clearly not lasting federations, but loose unions for war. On 
the other hand a great homogeneity of culture and religion among the tribes 
seems to result from the evidence of the Rigveda and to attest the definite and 
distinctive character of the Vedic people as distinct from the tribes of abori- 
gines.? 

The language of the Veda is essentially akin to Iranian as seen in the 
Avesta, and more remotely to the other tongues which make up the Indo- 
European family. From this fact, and from the picture of strife against 
peoples of dark colour in the Rigveda,*® has been deduced the theory that the 
Vedic Indians formed a body of invading tribes which broke into India from 
the north-west and carried with them a distinctive culture and religion, which 
they developed in a special manner under the influence of the new climatic 
conditions in which they found themselves in Northern India, and of inter- | 
mixture of blood through marriage with the aboriginal population. Of the 
latter fact there are probably clear traces already in the language of the 
Rigveda, which contains in the cerebral letters a series in the main unknown to 
other cognate languages and most plausibly * to be ascribed to the deteriora- 
tion of sounds in the mouths of generations of mixed blood. Moreover, all 
analogy is distinctly in favour of an early process of admixture. Complete 
destruction by invaders of pre-existing peoples is a comparatively rare pheno- 
menon and connotes a bloodthirsty spirit among the invaders which is not 
suggested by anything in the Rigveda. 

An alternative hypothesis has, however, been freely urged of late, which 
would see in the Aryan speech of the Rigveda no proof of real invasion of a 
people, and would, therefore, refer the religion of that Samhita not to Aryans 
but to the aborigines, presumably the Dravidians, who are clearly the most 
important of the early inhabitants of India.* With this theory may be con- 


regarded as purely speculative. 
4 Cf. Wackernagel, Altind. Gramm. i. § 144 
and p. xxii; Macdonell, Ved. Gramm., 


1 Cf. Feist, Kultur der Indogermanen, 
pp. 144-6; von Schroeder, Arische 
Religion, i. 247 ; Macdonell and Keith, 


Vedic Indea, i. 539 f. ; Hopkins, Trans. 
Conn. Acad. xv. 82. 

* Zimmer, Altindisches Leben (1879) ; Mac- 
donell and Keith, Vedic Index (1912) ; 
Keith, CHI. i. 77 ff. ; Kennedy, JRAS. 
1919, pp. 493 ff. ; 1920, pp. 31 ff. 

* Reminiscences of an older non-Indian 
home (seen, e. g., by Weber, Ind. Stud.i. 
161 ff., and B. G. Tilak, The Arctic 
Home in the Vedas) may be safely 


p- 33. Objections to the view of abori- 
ginal influence are suggested but not 
proved by Michelson, JAOS. xxxiii. 
145-9. Cf. Keith, CHI. i. 109f.; 
G. W. Brown, Studies in honor of 
Bloomfield, pp. 75 ff. ; Petersen, JAOS. 
Xxxli. 414 ff. 

5 Srinivas Iyengar, Life in Ancient India, 
pp. 6ff.; G. Slater, The Dravidian Ele- 
ment in Indian Culture (1923). 


10 The Sources [Part I 


nected the view suggested by Hall! that the Sumerians were originally 
Dravidians who developed their civilization in the valley of the Indus, and 
thence introduced it to the half nomadic Semites, teaching them the arts of 
writing, of town-dwelling, and of building in stone. The Aryans who invaded 
India were then civilized by the Dravidians, just as, according to the prevailing 
theory,” the Aryans of Greece owed their civilization to the Aegean race. The 
fatal difficulty from the point of view of proof presented by this theory is that 
there is not available any evidence by which it can even be made plausible. 
If the Sumerians were originally Dravidians, and attained a high civilization 
in the Indus valley, it is remarkable that no trace of this high civilization is 
to be found in India, which, as far as we know, first attained the art of writing 
from Semites not before 800 B.c., and which commenced building in stone 
and town-dwelling long after the age of the Rigveda. No traces of the stone 
buildings which presumably the Sumerians erected in the Indus valley have 
been discovered, and Dravidian civilization is first known to us as a historic 
fact many centuries after the latest date to which the Rigveda can be ascribed. 
The ascription to the Dravidians of the civilization of the Rigveda, therefore, 
remains a mere hypothesis, and one which is difficult to maintain in view of the 
clear opposition of the white and the dark races made in the Rigveda, where 
the white shows throughout its contempt for the black. Moreover, there is 
one very definite piece of evidence which suggests that the invaders were 
conscious, not merely of racial, but also of religious differences between them- 
selves and the aborigines. In two passages * are mentioned phallus-worship- 
pers and in both cases with abhorrence : it is certain that the Dravidians in 
historical times were addicted to this form of fetishism, and it is as probable 
as anything can be that the phallus-worshippers opposed by the singers were 
aborigines.4’ But it is of course obvious that, with the admixture of races 
which was inevitable, the admixture of religion was certain to follow, and traces 


1 Anc. Hist. of Near East, pp. 178, 174. ‘VOJ. ix. 287. (These passages are 


The facial aspect of Gudea in his 
statues seems to me wholly un-Dravi- 
dian. Rapson (CHI. i. 48) accepting a 
connexion derives the Dravidians from 
Western Asia. A. C. Das (Rig-Vedic 
India, i. 208 ff.) believes in Aryo- 
Dravidian influence on the Sumerians, 
holding that the Punjab was the Aryan 
home even in the Miocene epoch, and 
peopling Egypt with Dravido-Aryans. 


* E.g. Hall, Aegean Archaeology (1915) ; 


Evans, JHS. xxxiii. 277 ff. There is 
some exaggeration in this view; an 
Aryan infiltration may have preceded 
the Achaean, as suggested by Kretsch- 
mer, Glotta, i. 21 ff.; Keith, JRAS. 
1912, pp. 473, 474. 


® RV. vii. 21.5 x. 99.3; von Schroeder, 


erroneously cited by Dr. Farnell (Cults 
of the Greek States, v. 8) as applicable 
to Vedic religion.) That RV. x. 101 
and ix. 112 imply ritual use of the 
phallus is certainly implausible. It is 
Civa who is specially connected with the 
phallus from the epic onwards ; Vaic¢ra- 
vana (Kubera) and Icana (Rudra-Civa) 
are worshipped for the bridegroom, a 
fact which Hopkins (CHI. i. 233) 
interprets as pointing to their phallic 
nature (PGS. i. 8. 2; CGS. i. 11. 7). 
RV. viii. 1. 34 has no reference to cult ; 
cf., Hertel, VOJ. xxv. 172 ff. \Forva 
Greek parallel, cf. Keith, JHS. xxxvii. 
238. 


* Contrast A. C. Das, Rig-Vedic India, 


i. 267 f.; Giintert, Weltkénig, pp. 305 ff. 


Chap. 1] The Rigveda and the Aryans ll 


of such influence which are scanty in the Rigveda can be seen in greater 
abundance in the later texts. 

It has been assumed that the Dravidians may be reckoned as the aboriginal 
population encountered by the Aryan invaders, and, though this cannot 
strictly be proved, it is rendered extremely probable by the existence of a 
people of Dravidian speech, the Brahtis, in Baluchistan, whether we regard 
them in origin—now they are greatly mixed and un-Dravidian in type—as 
an advanced guard of a Dravidian movement from India, or as the remnant 
of an older population, left behind on the Dravidian advance from Western or 
Central Asia into India.’ It is, however, possible that the aborigines met by 
the Aryans included members of the pre-Dravidians who are still found as 
jungle tribes, and who are by some authorities * brought into relation with the 
Veddahs of Ceylon and the Sakai and Semang of the Malay Peninsula; the 
term ‘ noseless ’ applied to their opponents by some Aryan invaders at least 
is held to accord better with the appearance of pre-Dravidian than with that of 
Dravidian tribes. The argument is not decisive, but there is no reason to 
doubt that both pre-Dravidians and Dravidians may have been encountered 
by the Aryans. Whether Munda-speaking tribes were among their enemies it 
is idle to enquire, for we know even less of Mundé movements than of Dravi- 
dian; their physical appearance is now very much that of Dravidians, 
though their language proves to have affinity with the Mon-Khmer languages 
of Assam and Burma as well as with other forms of Austric speech scattered 
over the Pacific. 

Physical evidence of the present day suggests that about the longitude of 
Sirhind there sets in a distinct change of type in Northern India, and the type 
to the west of the line has been characterized as Indo-Aryan, that to the east 
as Aryo-Dravidian, the first including the areas of Kashmir, the Punjab to the 
longitude of Ambala, and Rajputana, the latter the eastern border of the 
Punjab, the United Provinces, and Bihar. Taken in conjunction with the 
grouping of modern vernaculars, this distinction has been made the basis of 
a theory which asserts that the Aryan invasion of India took place in two | 
distinct movements of very different character ; the one was carried out by | 
tribes which entered India through the passes of the Hindu Kush, passing | 
through South Afghanistan, and the valleys of the Kabul, Kurram, and 
Gumal rivers, and settling in the N.W. Frontier Province and the Punjab. 
These tribes were accompanied by their wives and families, a fact which is 
held to explain the predominantly Indo-Aryan character of the population 
west of Sirhind. On the other hand the second invasion was by the difficult 
way of Gilgit and Chitral, and was carried out by men unaccompanied by 
women, who, therefore, had to form alliances on a wholesale scale with the 


+ Imp. Gazetteer, i. 292 ff.; Rapson, CHI. who holds they originally were Munda 
i. 40 ff. speakers ; Kennedy, JRAS. 1919, pp. 
* Thurston, The Madras Presidency, pp.124f. 501 ff. ; Thurston, Castes and Tribes of 
Cf. the Nisaidas of the Vedic texts; Southern India, i. pp. xx ff. ; A. C. Das, 


Chanda, The Indo-Aryan Races, i. 4 ff., Rig-Vedic India, i. 99 ff.; CAH. i. 27 f. 


12 The Sources [Part I 


Dravidians, whence the changed type. The argument from ethnology is 
clearly unsatisfactory ; in the first place it is impossible to ignore the fact 
that there is still doubt whether the Indo-Europeans were Nordic blonds + or 
Mediterranean brunettes or Alpine brachycephalics or a mixed race; that 
the north-west of India has been the scene of prolonged and repeated inroads ; 
and that the present racial types are, therefore, very poor evidence for the 
racial types of 1200 B.c., not to mention 8000 B.c. Secondly, it is simple to 
explain the change as due merely to the fact that about the longitude of 
Sirhind the Dravidians were established in larger numbers and that the 
progress of the Aryans became seriously hampered; they had to convert 
rather than conquer, and the racial type is, therefore, naturally a compromise. 
The evidence from language? is clearly of even less value. The facts of the 
later dialectic differences can be wholly and satisfactorily explained® by the 
inevitable mode of propagation of linguistic influence ; from the centre of that 
influence, the middle country of the Brahmana period, linguistic influence was 
exerted in a manner which necessarily became more and more feeble in pro- 
portion to the distance of the peoples affected from the centre; hence the 
phenomena of outer and inner languages are explained without recourse to the 
speculation which introduces invaders over an almost impossible route, and, 
what is far worse, demands that we should recognize a sharp break between the 
civilization of the Rigveda and that of the Brahmanas, assigning the former 
to the Punjab, and the latter to the middle country. The literature of the 
Vedic period shows emphatically no break of any kind in culture ; it displays 
instead evidence of the advance of the Vedic civilization from the Punjab 
to the middle country, in an orderly progress, which conforms precisely to 
what would a priori be expected. 

The religion of the Rigveda is, therefore, the product of Aryans who must 
have been affected considerably by their new environment and whose blood 
must have been becoming more and more intermingled by intermarriage ; 
but it is only proper to recognize that we really do not know, and have no 
means of ascertaining, how far the people at the period of the Rigveda can be 
styled Aryo-Dravidian, rather than Indo-Aryan. For this reason it is 
hopeless to seek to estimate the relative contributions of Aryan and Dravidian 
to the intellectual product of the Brahmans, for we have insufficient knowledge 
of what was true Aryan, and we know facts regarding Dravidian thought only 


* Von Schroeder, Arische Religion, i. 174 ff. that the Bharatas found the speech of 
The modern conditions are fully re- the Pirus barbarous, for mrdhravdc 
viewed in Sir A. Baines’s Ethnography. refers to hostile speech (Vedic Index, 

* Grierson, Imp. Gazetteer, i. 357 ff. ; Risley i. 471), nor is it at all clear that the 
(The Peoples of India, p. 55) renders the Bharatas were late comers. 
theory untenable by placing the first ‘* Assertions of Dravidian predominance 
invaders originally in Arachosia and (Crooke, North-Western Provinces of 
Seistan. India, p. 60) can neither be proved nor 

% See Rapson, CHI. i. 50; ef. Keith, ibid. disproved, but the prevailing of Aryan 
p. 119; Kennedy, JRAS. 1919, pp. speech must be remembered. 


526 ff., who, however, errs in saying 


Chap. 1] The Rigveda and the Aryans 13 
long after it had been affected by the Aryan invasion. Here as often confession 
of ignorance is preferable to the idle affectation of knowledge. 

As the Rigveda is of so recent a period, it is natural to ask whether the 
religion which it contains has not traces of influence by the cultures of the great 
nations of the East and above all of Babylonia. The answer to this question 
cannot be given with any certainty as in the affirmative: the only cogent 
proof of the borrowing of deities by one people from another, in cases where the 
borrowing is not formally recorded, is afforded by the appropriation of the 
name and the similarity of character of the gods: mere similarity is wholly 
insufficient, unless the conception formed of the particular divinity is of so 
special a kind that parallelism is not a reasonable explanation. In the case 
of the Rigveda and of the later Vedic texts no such instance of borrowing is 
hinted at, and no case is known in which the similarity of name even suggests 
that a god has been taken over from another people, so that at most we are 
left to rely on the argument from similarity of character. Strength would 
doubtless be given to such arguments if the language of the Rigveda could be 
proved to contain loan-words from Semitic sources, but the only two which 
have with any probability been alleged, the word mand,! apparently meaning 
‘ornament ’ and described as golden, which is often equated with the Baby- 
lonian? Mina, and the word parac¢u, axe, are too isolated to prove anything at 
all. AsSur cannot reasonably be connected with Asura? either as source or 
result and it is impossible to prove that the year of 360 days of the Rigveda is 
to be derived from the Babylonian year,* and still less that the sacred number 
seven is adopted under Babylonian influence for an Aryan nine.® 

While the religion of the Rigveda seems to stand free of foreign elements, 
it cannot be assumed that the version presented to us in that collection is at 
all a complete record of the religion of the period of the composition of the 
hymns. It contains the poetry used by the priests in the sacrifices to the high 
gods, but not, with rare exceptions, the lower religious or magical beliefs. 
Even, however, of the hieratic views it gives no complete account: the 
collectors of the hymns in the main were interested in the Soma ritual, and the 
great majority of the hymns deal with some form or other of that rite: the 
animal sacrifice is hardly noticed, save in the case of the most important and 
rare sacrifice, that of the horse. Moreover it cannot be doubted that much of 


2 RV. viii. 78. 2; Macdonell and Keith, manen, p. 214) suggests possible bor- 


Vedic Index, ii. 128, 129. The alleged 
borrowing of the war chariot from 
Babylon is wholly dubious and in any 
case is probably pre-Aryan; von 
Schroeder, Arische Religion, i. 2388. 
For guesses, see Brunnhofer, Arische 
Urzeit, pp. 89f., 415; B. G. Tilak, 
Bhandarkar Comm. Vol., pp. 29 ff. 


* Wackernagel, Altind. Gramm. i. p. xxii; 


Kretschmer, Gesch. d. griech. Sprache, 
p- 106; Feist (Kultur der Indoger- 


rowing from a third source by Babylon 
and India. But see Macdonell and 
Keith, Vedic Indez, ii. 128 f. 


3’ Cf. Thomas, JRAS. 1916, p. 364, with 


Chadwick in Moulton, Early Zoroas- 
trianism, p. 31. 


* Keith, JRAS. 1916, p. 355. Cf. Meyer, 


Gesch, des Alt.’ I. ii. p. 913. 


5 Von Schroeder, Arische Religion, ii. 426 ff. 


Contrast Hopkins, Origin of Religion, 
pp. 291 f. 


14 The Sources [Part I 


the poetry is highly artificial, the expression not of naive faith but of refined 
speculation : there is much—usually empty—mysticism, and phrase making, 
the work of competing poets without religious inspiration. On the other hand 
there are numerous hymns which are perfectly simple in thought and even 
in diction, and part of the obscurity of the poetry is due merely to the fact that 
it is rich in references to myths, which are, as is inevitable in hymns, only 
alluded to and not set out in detail. Such references are of comparatively 
little importance in the consideration of Vedic religion, of which it is possible 
to obtain definite views irrespective of the exact force to be ascribed to obscure 
myths. 

The accusation, however, which is often made against the Rigveda of 
being purely sacerdotal cannot be accepted, for it contains enough matter in 
its later portions to show that the compilers were perfectly familiar with the 
\ popular religion of the day. Thus we have hymns intended to act as spells 
against vermin,! or the disease Yaksma,* to bring back the life of one ap- 
parently dead, to destroy enemies,‘ to procure children,® to destroy the demon 
who kills offspring,® to induce sleep,’ and even to oust a co-wife from a husband’s 
affections. Most of these hymns occur in book x, which preserves also the 
marriage hymn,° a piece of priestly ingenuity, and the funeral hymns.!° 
These with four or five gnomic hymns," some philosophic and cosmogonic 
speculations,!*# and some hymns, or portions of hymns, in praise of generous 
patrons of the priests relieve the monotony of the collection, and help to 
obviate the wholly erroneous view that the early religion of India consisted 
merely in the invocation of high gods. But the real extent of the popular 
religion and much of the hieratic must be sought for in the later Samhitas, and 
above all in the Atharvaveda. 

The limitations of the Rigveda have been ascribed by Hillebrandt 4 to the 
existence in the period of that text of a ritual distinction of fundamental 
importance, that between the Devayana, the period when the gods are 
worshipped, and the Pitryana, the period when the Fathers are revered. The 
former is the time when the sun is in the constellations in the north, and the 
moon in those to the south, while the reverse is the time of the Pitryana, the 
distinction being marked in the mythology by the flight of the god Agni, 
possibly a reflection of the disappearance of the sun in the darkness of winter. 
The Rigveda, on this view, would represent the worship of the Devayana; 
its exclusive character would be merely apparent. Unfortunately the sugges- 


Sate Re hs 10 x. 14-18. 

coxa LOS. AIX ee LA eee OAsns La ek 1 ds 

’ x. 58; 60. 7-12. 12 x, 81, 82, 90, 121, 129; i. 164, which, like 
oe UGG viii. 29, is a riddle hymn. 

Pex 18S, 13 Macdonell, Sansk. Lit., pp. 120 ff. 

we  Y-f 14 Ved. Myth. iii. 67, 71, 204, 285, 299; 
La OO. (Kl. Ausg.), pp. 20, 50, 170, 177. Con- 
eexo ad's cf.x. 159. trast Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, p. 11, 
* x. 85. n, 1. 


Chap. 1] The Rigveda and the Aryans 15 


tion is open to two fatal objections. It is not in accord with tradition which 
does not thus connect the Rigveda with the ceremonies of the Devayana 
or the Uttarayana,! with which Hillebrandt, without warrant, identifies that 
term, and, as a matter of fact, the Rigveda does contain, along with other 
matter not appropriate to its supposed purpose, a most important section of 
hymns dealing with the worship of the Fathers. We find, indeed, once more 
that only as a historical rather than a liturgical collection is the condition of 
the Rigveda logically explicable. 

The form of the collection is entirely metrical, and it is matter of pure 
conjecture that in some cases the verses preserved represent merely one side 
of an ancient form of composition in which verses inserted in prose expressed 
the chief emotional points in conversation or narrative, or in the alternative 
that some hymns represent dramas in nuce. Neither hypothesis appears to 
have much plausibility, but for the purposes of the history of Vedic religion 
the question possesses no great importance.? 


! For this term see Macdonell and Keith, For Hertel’s theory of the origin of the 
Vedic Indez, i. 529; ii. 467. Rigveda see Appendix A. 
2 See ref. in Keith, Sanskrit Drama, chap. i. 


CHAPTER 2 
THE LATER SAMHITAS AND THE BRAHMANAS 


ALREADY in the Rigveda there are signs of considerable elaboration of 
ritual and of the employment of a number of priests at the sacrifice, and the 
later Samhitas and the Brahmanas reveal to us a time when the functions of 
the priesthood have been definitely divided up and apportioned among sets 
of priests. The manual acts of the sacrifice are ascribed to the Adhvaryu 
priest and his assistants and are accompanied by muttered formulae, in prose 
or verse, styled Yajus: in addition at the greatest sacrifices, such as the 
Soma sacrifice, singers chant Simans, and reciters recite Castras, while the 
Brahman priest supervises the whole performance, usually in silence. 
On this division of functions is based the division of the later Samhitas: the 
Samans are preserved in the song books of the Samaveda, the Yajuses in the 
Yajurveda, and the Atharvaveda is held to be connected with the Brahman 
priest, while the Castras were composed of verses taken from the Rigveda. 
From the point of view of religion the Simaveda is mainly interesting for its 
form: the words which were sung were almost invariably taken from the 
Rigveda, but they were eked out as shown in the song-books, Ganas, with 
all kinds of interjections, doubtless for musical purposes, which must have 
converted their character in the most marked degree. The sense of the words 
cannot possibly have been understood in the mutilated form in which the 
chants were sung, and the conclusion is inevitable that their religious value 
lay not in the substance but in the form, so that the Simans have been com- 
pared, not altogether unaptly, to the revival hymns beloved by the African 
negro in the new world. In them doubtless the religious excitement of the 
priest found its fullest scope for expression.! That this form of chant was old 
need not be doubted: there are clear traces in the Rigveda itself in the 
strophie and metrical form of certain of the hymns,? that they were from the 
_ first intended for something more lively than mere recitation. With this fact 
accords the generally close relation of the Samaveda and the Rigveda, which 
renders it probable that that was of the first of the later Samhitas to take 
definite form. 

The Yajurveda represents the literary fixing of the formulae used by the 


1 Bloomfield, VOJ. xvii. 156 ff.; JAOS. Ganas. 
xxl. 50ff. On the recensions see * The chief metre of portions recited by the 


Caland’s ed. of the Jaiminiya Samhita 
(1907); VOJ. xxii. 436 ff. ; Oldenberg, 
GGA. 1908, pp. 711 ff.; Simon, VOJ. 
xxvii. 305 ff. For the Pirvarcika there 
are the Gramageya and Aranya, for 
the Uttararcika the Oha and Uhya 


Hotr (as shown by internal evidence 
and ritual use) is Tristubh, without 
strophic form; of those used by the 
Udgatr Gayatri and Pragatha in three 
and two verse sets ; Oldenberg, ZDMG. 
Xxxvill. 439 ff. 


Chap. 2] The Later Samhitas and the Brahmanas 17 


Adhvaryu and his assistants in their performance of the great sacrifices : 
clearly the actual use of such formulae must have been normal from the 
beginning of the sacrifice, but it was only after the collection of the Rigveda 
hymns that the idea of creating a similar Samhita for the Adhvaryu became 
popular. This is shown unmistakably by the frequent application for the 
purposes of the Adhvaryu of verses from the Rigveda, in many cases without 
any real propriety and often with alterations deliberately planned to adapt 
them to their new use. Whereas the Rigveda has come down to us in but 
one collection, the Yajurveda ! is preserved in two main recensions, which at 
comparatively early date received in India the names of the Black and the 
White Yajurveda. The origin of these appellations is uncertain, but later 
they were interpreted in such manner as to suggest that the White Yajurveda 
owed its name to the fact that in it the formulae of the Adhvaryu were collected 
separately from the explanatory remarks which accompany them in the texts 
of the Black Yajurveda. In making this distinction the compilers of the 
White Yajurveda, which has come down to us in the Samhita called the 
Vajasaneyi, were merely restoring the primitive condition of the Yajurveda, 
which must at one time have consisted of a collection of the formulae, in 
prose and verse, only.? But already at a comparatively early period the 
formulae were accompanied by explanations, called Brahmanas, texts per- 
taining to the Brahman or sacred lore, in which the different acts of the 
ritual were given symbolical interpretations, the words of the texts commented 
on, and stories told to illustrate the sacrificial performance. Hence in the 
Black Yajurveda we find three complete recensions, the Taittiriya, Kathaka, 
and Maitrayani,® and one imperfect, the Kapisthala, in which formulae and 
Brahmana are closely allied, while in the case of the White Yajurveda the 
Brahmanas are all collected in one great work, the most important of its type 
in Vedic literature, the Catapatha Brahmana. Perhaps as a result of this 
separation, a mass of old material, partly formulae, partly Brahmana, which 
had not been incorporated in the Taittiriya Samhita was collected together in 
the Taittiriya Brahmana, which in part contains matter more recent than the 
Samhita, but in part has matter as old as, at any rate, the later portions of 
that text. 

Explanations were not less required for the other Samhitas, and the 
Rigveda is dealt with in two Brahmanas,* the Aitareya, and the Kausitaki, 
the latter of which is far more concise than the former, though it covers in 
some respects a wider sphere. The SAamaveda formed the topic of the great 


1 See Keith, The Veda of the Black Yajus as Kecava Narayana, &c. Similar 
School (HOS. xviii and xix), 1914. interpolations are found in other Vedic 

* Oldenberg, Prolegomena, pp. 290 ff. texts, especially in the Khilas, or 

’ ii. 9 of this text is an obvious interpola- Apocrypha, of the Rigveda, and as a 
tion mentioning sub-Vedic deities such rule no mention of them is made in this 
as Brahman, the four-faced, and lotus- work. 


seated; Karata, elephant-faced and ‘ Ed. and trans. Keith, HOS. xxv, 1920. 
tusked ; Gauri, mountain born; Visnu 


2 [.0.s. 31] 


18 The Sources [Part I 


Paficavinca Brahmana! and the Jaiminiya Brahmana,’ the latter of which 
unhappily exists only in a very imperfect text and has only in part been 
published, beside a large number of minor and unimportant texts styled 
Brahmanas, of which the Sadvinga, a sort of supplement to the Paficavingea, 
and the Samavidhana are of some value as dealing with magic practices of 
varied kinds. 

Full as are the other Samhitas of magic rites, the Atharvaveda ® differs 
from them in the fact that, whereas they are essentially connected with the 
sacrifice, its connexion with that operation is external and mechanical. In 
essence it is a collection of spells for every conceivable end of human life, 
spells to secure success of every kind, in the assembly, in public life, to restore 
an exiled king, to procure health and offspring, to defeat rivals in love, 
to drive away diseases in every form, to win wealth and so on. But at the 
same time the subject-matter has been thoroughly worked over by the priest- 
hood, and it has even in its simplest spells throughout a priestly veneer. The 
priests have also added many spells directly bearing on portions of their 
sacrificial activities, and the wedding and burial hymns appear in more 
elaborate forms. Theosophy qua profit-bringing* is not absent, and a 
deliberate attempt was later made to bring the Atharvaveda into the circle 
of the three orthodox Vedas by the addition to the collection of book xx which 
contains the hymns to be used by the Brahmanacchansin priest in the ritual 
of the Soma sacrifice. It is, however, important to note that this Veda, 
despite the attempts made to raise it to an equal place with the others, never 
succeeded in achieving this position: useful as were its spells, and much as 
the priests of the school of the Atharvaveda thrust themselves forward as 
indispensable to princes through their magic powers, there were always not 
lacking voices to criticize its claim to be a fourth legitimate Veda.® In 
modern times this prejudice and recognition of the special character of the 
work are reflected in the suggestion that the text is actually the product of 
strata of society different from those of the Rigveda: Ridgeway ® insists that 
the Atharvaveda is the record of aboriginal as opposed to Aryan religion. 
This view, however, cannot be pressed too far: the Atharvaveda reflects the 
practices of the lower side of religious life, and is closer to the common people 
than the highly hieratic atmosphere of much of the Rigveda: the common 
people, we cannot doubt, were largely influenced by aboriginal ideas through 
mixture with aboriginal races, but, as will be seen below, we have no criterion 
on which we can safely rely to decide that certain beliefs are non-Aryan and 


1 See Hopkins, Trans. of the Connecticut Bloomfield, pp. 1 ff. 

Acad. of Arts, xv. 20 ff. 4 Edgerton, Studies in honor of Bloomfield, 
2 On the kindred, lost, Catyayana, see pp. 117 ff. 

Oertel, JAOS. xviii. 15. 5 Bloomfield, Atharvaveda (1899), and SBE. 
° Trans. in Caunaka recension by Whitney xiii. 

and Lanman (HOS. viiand viii); onthe * Dramas and Dramatic Dances of non- 

Paippalada, in course of ed. in JAOS., European Races, p. 122. 


see L, C. Barret, Studies in honor of 


Chap. 2] The Later Samhitds and the Brahmanas 19 


aboriginal. The same problem in effect presents itself as in the case of the 
Homeric poems. Are we to suppose that they represent Aryan religion, 
and that that religion was free from admixture with the lower side of religion, 
which is freely revealed in the later literature of Greece and foreshadowed by 
the evidence of Aegean cult objects ? The answer to that question given by 
Lang 1 in the affirmative seems most improbable, though not more so than the 
suggestion of Gilbert Murray ? that the Homeric poems are the result of a 
process of conscious refining of older tradition. Like the Homeric poems the 
Rigveda does not cover the whole field of religious belief, and we have no sure 
ground on which to assign to the non-Aryan as opposed to the other elements 
in the population all the lower forms of religion. 

The later Samhitas are doubtless of various date: the Sdmaveda must 
probably be reckoned as the earliest, and the Atharvaveda is certainly the 
youngest of all in its redaction, though it is doubtless in part old in material. 
Of the Yajurveda Samhitas the youngest is the Vajasaneyi, and the oldest 
perhaps the Taittiriya, but between it and the other two texts of the Black 
Yajurveda there is no clear distinction of time. The Brahmanas are certainly 
later than the formulae of the Samhitas to which they relate, and they are 
distinguished sharply from them both by their prose form, which is quite 
different from the prose of the formulae, and by the characteristics of their 
language, which is much less archaic than the verse or prose formulae. 
The order in age amongst them, and the prose portions of the Samhitas, which 
are essentially akin to them is doubtful; it is, however, very probable that the 
Aitareya in its first five books is among the oldest, that the prose parts of the 
Yajurveda Sambhitas, and, though later, the Paficavinga are also old, and 
that the Kausitaki, Jaiminiya, and Catapatha are the latest of the important 
works.? For the date of the Brahmanas important evidence is furnished by 
the development of thought: the latest portions of the texts which are of the 
older Brahmana style are styled Aranyakas, books intended by reason of the 
dread holiness of their contents for study in the forests, and of these certain 
parts which bear a more definitely philosophical aspect are styled Upanisads, 
a word apparently derived from the session of the pupils round the teacher in 
the process of instruction. Thus there are attached to the Brahmanas of the 
Rigveda the Aitareya and the Kausitaki or Cankhayana Upanisads, to the 
Taittiriya Brahmana the Taittiriya Upanisad, to the Catapatha Brahmana 
the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad: the Simaveda has the Chandogya Upanisad 
which is the major portion of a Brahmana, and the Jaiminiya Upanisad Brah- 
mana, which is one book of the Jaiminiya Brahmana, and contains in itself 
the Kena Upanisad. In the main it may be assumed that the doctrines of 


1 The World of Homer (1910). Rigveda Brahmanas, pp. 40 ff. On the 

2 Greek Epic (2nd ed. 1911). Even Leaf Jaiminiya cf. Caland, Over en uit het 
(Homer and History, ch. viii) refuses to Jaiminiya-Brahmana (1914), pp. 5 ff., 
accept the theory of expurgation. whose conclusions are dubious ; see for 

3 Keith, Aitareya Aranyaka, pp. 21 ff. ; the priority of the Kausitaki, Keith, 
Taittiriya Samhita, i. pp. clix-clxxiii ; BSOS. I. iv. 177. 


9* 


20 The Sources [Part I 


i 


these Upanisads are prior to the rise of Buddhism, which is derived logically 
from the system which they contain, and, as the date of the death of the 
Buddha may be placed with fair probability in or about the year 480 B.c., 
a lower terminus of 500 B.c. for the Upanisads is attained. The priority of the 
Brahmanas proper to the Upanisads is quite undoubted, and thus a lower 
limit of about 600 B.c. for the latest Brahmanas is obtained, from which may 
be deduced a date of about 800-700 B.c. for the Samhitas as a lower limit. 
The same conclusion is indicated by the facts of language: the grammarian 
Panini, whose date can scarcely be later than 300 B.c.,/ deals with a language 
which is decidedly more modern than that of the Brahmanas to which, how- 
ever, it is akin: prior to him was Yaska, whose expositions in his Nirukta of 
Vedic passages indicates clearly that the Rigveda was already far distant in 
time : earlier again than Yaska was Cakalya, by whom was produced the Pada 
Patha of the Rigveda, that is the text in which each word is given in its 
primitive form unaffected by the Sandhi of the Samhita, and earlier again 
than Cakalya was the making of the Samhita Patha, in which, to the utter 
detriment of the metre, the hiatuses which were allowed in the Rigvedic 
poetry are removed under the influence of the usage and grammatical theories 
of the day. But the Brahmanas as a rule ignore the Samhita text, and 
evidently knew only the primitive text without the latter rigid Sandhi rules, 
so that for them again we are forced to accept a date not later than 600 B.c. 

Efforts to establish an earlier date for the Samhitas and the Brahmanas 
have naturally been made, and of these two may be mentioned. Jacobi? has 
insisted that the post-Vedice period may be dated from c. 800 B.c. on the 
strength of the fact that the end of the Vedic period is marked by the simul- 
taneous appearance of the Samkhya-Yoga and Jaina philosophies, and the 
latter can be carried back to c. 740 B. c., seeing that the founder of the faith was 
probably Pareva, whose Nirvana falls 250 years before that of Mahavira, and 
the latter was contemporaneous with the Buddha, who died about 483 B.c. 
The argument is extremely unconvincing, apart altogether from our complete 
ignorance as to the historical character and the date of Pareva. It assumes 
that the Jain doctrines as we know them go back before Mahavira, and that 
they presuppose the doctrines of the Upanisads as older. Neither proposition 
possesses the slightest plausibility, and neither need be seriously discussed in 
the absence of any effort of Jacobi to support his assertion in this matter by 
reasoned proof. 

A second line of argument is based on the war which forms the main 
topic of the Mahabharata; by various modes of reckoning of dynasties 
recorded in the Puranas the date of 1000 or 1100 B. c.? is attained for the war, 


1 Efforts to place Panini much earlier are Aranyaka, pp. 21 ff.; Rigveda Brah- 
frequent, but his reference to Yavanani, mands, p. X. 
Greek writing, is difficult to reconcile * Die Entwicklung der Gottesidee bei den 
with a much earlier date than about the Indern (1923), pp. 24 f. 


4th century B.c. Cf. Keith, Aitareya * CHI. i. 275, 306f. An excellent reductio 


Chap. 2] The Later Samhitds and the Brahmanas 21 


and, as the Pandus are unknown to the Samhitas and the Brahmanas, it is 
contended that they must fall before the war of the Kurus and the Pandavas. 
It is difficult to appreciate the naive credulity which accepts as having any 
value these late lists of kings, which are preserved to us in works dating at 
soonest fifteen hundred years after the alleged date of the war, and which, 
when they come into contact with known facts, immediately reveal themselves 
as without value. Thus into the dynastic list of Kosala we find that the 
eponymous founder of the Cakya line, the Buddha’s father, he himself, and 
Rahula have all been interpolated without the slightest historical justification, 
and it seems puerile, in the face of these facts, to insist on regarding these lists 
as the basis for chronological calculations of any kind. When the conflict 
between the Kurus and the Pandavas took place we do not know, and the 
assumption that it represented a vast struggle in which all the peoples of 
Northern India at any rate were engaged, because in the Mahabharata in its 
final form it is so represented, argues a signal forgetfulness of the powers of 
poetic and popular imagination, and of the history of the Roland Romance 
among others or of the Odysseus or Aineias legend. Hence it appears wholly 
unwise to seek to derive a high date for the Samhitas and Brahmanas from any 
argument based on the date of the epic war. 

Nor probably is it safe to insist! that the period between the older 
Upanisads and Buddhism must be one of several centuries, and thus to 
increase the antiquity of these Upanisads, and consequently of the Brahmanas 
and Samhités. We have no means of estimating the rate of advance of 
thought in the period in question, and a further serious difficulty must be 
faced by those who wish to establish an early date for the Upanisads. The 
developed doctrines of Buddhism cannot be proved to be those of the Buddha, 
or to date from even the fifth century B.c.,? so that it is in all likelihood wiser 
to content ourselves with the belief, rather than the absolute assurance, that 
a date before 500 B.c. may reasonably be assumed for these Upanisads.? 
To assert a much greater antiquity is easy and it has the advantage of in- 
creasing the interest of the study of the Upanisads, but there seems little 
satisfaction in beliefs which cannot be supported by any serious evidence. 

A decisive argument against any early dating of the Upanisads would 
be available if we accepted the view often held 4 that the Ajatacgatru who 
figures in the Kausitaki and the Brhadéranyaka Upanisads as king of Kaci is 


ad absurdum is found in A. C. Das, alleged Acokan date ofthe Kathavatthu, 
Rig-Vedic India, i. 279 ff. a view as improbable as the theory of 

1 Cf .Oldenberg, Die Lehre der Upanishaden, Pali as the language of the Sthaviras 
pp. 288, 357, n. 185. of Pataliputra. 

* See Keith, Buddhist Philosophy, chap. i. * Cf. Hopkins, JAOS. xxii. 386; Rapson, 
Cf. Oltramare, La _ théosophie boud- Ancient India, p. 181; Keith, CHI. i. 
dhique (1923), pp. 56, 64 ff., who recog- 112, 147. 
nizes that Acoka knew no canon. ‘ See Keith, ZDMG. Ixii. 134 f. Identity 
Max Walleser (Sprache und Heimat des is assumed in Winternitz, Gesch. d. ind. 


Pali-Kanons, pp. 23 f.) still clings to the Lit. i. 484. 


22 The Sources [Part I 


identical with the Ajatasattu of the Buddhist texts,! who was contem- 
poraneous with the Buddha. It appears to me, however, that any such 
identification wholly lacks justification, especially as the name is no more 
than an epithet and thus possesses singularly little probative value, while the 
king of the Buddhist texts is not king of Kaci. 

An effort has been made by Hopkins ? to establish a more precise estima- 
tion of the period intervening between the Upanisad of the Jaiminiya and its 
Brahmana. The latter mentions Gausikti, while the former has the same 
name as that of a teacher, giving after him ten recipients of the doctrine. 
This would give say three centuries, which he deems a not unreasonable time, 
in accord with the advance of the Upanisad in doctrine. The suggestion seems 
untenable; there is nothing whatever to prove that Gaustkti was a recent 
figure in the time of the Brahmana, nor does the fact that the Brahmana does 
not mention the other teachers referred to show that they existed after its 
composition, and, least of all, is there any evidence that we are to treat the 
list as representing generations. There is no evidence whatever that the 
record is one of teacher to youthful pupil. 

The usual astronomical evidence has been adduced to establish the 
early date of the Brahmanas, or at least of the statements recorded in them. 
As the lack of value of this evidence has been established,’ it is sufficient to note 
one point which has been held to fix definitely the date of one passage in the 
Catapatha Brahmana ; there, in a discussion of the time for establishing the 
sacred fires, the Krttikas are recommended as a possibility, on the score* that 
they do not move from the eastern quarter, while the other Naksatras do 
move. It is really impossible to attach serious value to such an assertion, 
made in a passage which consists of foolish reasons for preferring one or other 
of the Naksatras ; we are in the same region of popular belief as when in the 
Siutra literature the existence of Dhruva, a fixed polar star, is alleged.® 

There are clear traces in the later Samhitas and the Brahmanas of social 
and religious changes in the people. The centre of Vedic culture is still, as 
probably in the period when the main part of the Rigveda was produced, 
the land of the Kurus lying between the Sutle] and the Jumna, but im- 
portance now attaches also to the kindred tribe of Paficdlas, whose name 


* Vincent Smith’s dating of this prince c. Cf. S. B. Dikshit, IA. xxiv. 245 f. ; 


554 B.C., putting the Buddha’s death 
c. 546 B.C. (Oxford History of India, 
pp. 48, 58 n., 70), rests on a false inter- 
pretation of the inscription of Kharavela 
of Kalinga (see ref. in Keith, Sanskrit 


A. C. Das (Rig-Vedic India, i. (1921) ) 
prefers even greater antiquity. For 
TB. iii. 1. 1. 5, adduced by him (p. 47) 
from Tilak (Arctic Home, p. 2), see 
Keith, JRAS. 1911, pp. 794 ff. 


Drama, p. 89). 
* Trans. Conn. Acad, xv. 30. 
* See ref. above, p. 4, n. 7. 
‘“ CB. ii. 1. 2. 3. Krttikas must then 


5 In favour of a late date may be adduced 
the mention of iron if the introduction 
of that can be placed c. 1000 B.c. 
(CHI. i. 56, 615), but this also is merely 
(D. Mukhopadhyaya, The Hindu conjectural. For the question of Ayas 
Naksatras (1923), pp. 41 ff.) have see Vedic Index, i. 81f., 1513; ii. 285, 
been on the equator, i.e. 3000 B.c. 398. 


Chap. 2] The Later Samhitas and the Brahmanas 23 


seems to signify that they were a union of five older tribes, but whose con- 
nexion in origin with the Kurus is attested by the record that they were 
once called Krivis.1 The Pajficala land stretched, eastward from Kuruksetra, 
from the Merut district to Allahabad, and included the territory between the 
Jumna and the Ganges, called the Doab. But the Catapatha Brahmana ? 
records the advance of the Brahmanical system into Kosala and Videha, 
which roughly correspond with Oudh and Tirhut.? The Atharvaveda knows 
iron and silver as well as the copper and gold of the Rigveda. The comparative 
frequence of mention of the elephant and the appearance of the tiger and the 
panther in the later Samhitas, whereas lion and wolf are conspicuous in 
the Rigveda, as well as the mention of rice, are clear indications of the 
advance of the Vedic Indians further to the east and the south. The 
Acvattha (ficus religiosa) is rare in the Rigveda, but becomes common in 
the Atharvaveda, which also knows the Nyagrodha (ficus indica). At the 
same time it is clear that the system of classes became more and more com- 
plicated and the divisions were drawn more and more distinctly : the Yajur- 
veda enumerates large numbers of special classes which in some degree at 
least seem to have been hereditary. The admixture of the people doubtless 
had proceeded very far: after the Rigveda it would be difficult to find any 
simple consciousness of the contrast of the colours of the Aryan and the 
Cidra classes as opposed as white and black. The Rigveda, it is probable, 
already knew of the system by which normally the princely class, the priests, 
and the ordinary people were distinguished, and it knew also of the slaves 
made from the aborigines, but it was left to this later period to introduce a 
much more elaborate and fixed system of division. The Cidras must on the 
one hand often have become rather serfs than slaves, when large bodies of them 
were reduced to subjection by the invaders, while among the ordinary people 
hereditary functions began to supersede the variety of choice of occupation 
which is evidenced by the Rigveda.* To these factors of differentiation must 
be added the result of mixture of races and rules of intermarriage : the doctrine 
familiar in later texts that many classes of the people were due to mixed 
marriages between men and women of different classes indicates that this 
factor must have been of considerable importance in assisting in the develop- 
ment of classes into castes, the process of which, however, we have to con- 
jecture from most inadequate material. With the development of society 
there doubtless took place growth in prosperity and wealth, favouring the 


1 Hopkins’s suggestion (CHI. i. 254) that the by CHI. i. 601, in TA. ii. 1.11, is an 
Pajicalas may represent five Naga clans error, due to a hasty reading of BR. i. 
connected with the Kurus or Krivis 1120, which really refers to Trik. (i. e. 
(meaning ‘ serpent’), and that none Trikandacesa) ii. 1. 11. 
of the families is of pure Aryan blood, ‘* Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Indez, ii. 
seems decidedly speculative. 247-71. For Indo-European class dis- 

2 1.4. 1.10 ff. ; Macdonell and Keith, Vedic tinctions cf. Feist, Kultur der Indo- 
Index, ii. 288 f. germanen, pp. 291 ff.; Moulton, Early 


8’ The reference to the Odras (Orissa) seen Zoroastrianism, pp. 117, 183 f. 


24 The Sources [Part I 


constantly increasing elaboration of the sacrifice with its resulting exaltation of 
the importance of the trained priesthood, without which the offerings could not 
successfully be carried out. But while the tribes, in several cases at least, 
doubtless were more closely united, and while thus the royal power became 
greater, there is no proof of the growth of any large kingdoms or empires, nor 
can we say that there was much development of city life. 

As sources for knowledge of the Vedic deities the later Samhitas and the 
Brahmanas cannot be ranked high: the essential aim of the Yajurveda is the 
correct performance of the sacrifice, and the deities are of little consequence 
in comparison with the mechanism of that operation, to which is ascribed the 
whole control of the universe, and in the performance of which the universe is 
ever renewed. In the case of the Atharvaveda the position of the deities 
is still less important : constantly as they are introduced, their connexion with 
the magic spells which are the most original and essential part of that text is 
external merely : the god, and still more his name, adds potency to the spell, 
and the more gods enumerated, however diverse their functions and spheres of 
influence, the better the result. Even where in that Samhita a deity is 
celebrated, the spirit is quite different from the spirit of the Rigveda: the 
goddess earth has a whole long hymn in a late book of the Atharva,? but the 
careful catalogue of all that grows on the earth and the sights and sounds upon 
it is recounted in a spirit quite unparalleled in the Rigveda. Hence it is not 
surprising that many of the minor figures of the pantheon of the Rigveda dis- 
appear, or at best sink to mere names, while on the other hand the religion 
shows development in two different directions. On the one hand, theosophic 
speculation brings into existence new and in some degree abstract deities ; 
on the other, gods of the people receive a recognition which is not accorded to 
them in the Rigveda. Of the former tendency the most prominent example 
is the rise to high rank of Prajapati, as the creator god and the father of the 
gods as of men, and the exaltation to the rank of deities of such abstractions 
as Kala, * time ’, Kama, ‘ desire ’, Rohita, ‘ the ruddy one ’, perhaps an aspect 
of the sun, the Vratya, as the convert to the priestly faith was named, the 
Ucchista, or ‘ remnant ’ of the sacrificial offering, and so forth. Of the other 
tendency examples are to be seen in the increasing importance attached to 
Rudra and to Visnu, who by the time of Megasthenes (c. 300 B.c.)? were 
two of the chief gods worshipped in Northern India, and in whom we must 
probably see contamination of aboriginal with Aryan deities, the direct 
worship of snakes, perhaps induced by the experience of their terrors in India, 
the stress laid on the popular figures of the Apsarases and the Gandharvas, 
who, whatever their origin, are clearly little more in this period than fairies 
and sprites, and perhaps the collective view of the Asuras as a horde of evil 
spirits opposed in eternal, if unsuccessful, struggles to the gods in which they 


2 Even AB. viii. 14, 23 shows how little Polity, pp. 13 ff. 
real empire existed. Cf. Vedic Index, * xii. 1. 
i. 19f.; N. N. Law, Ancient Indian 3 i. 29-87; L. 


Chap. 2] The Later Samhitas and the Brahmanas 25 


defeat their adversaries, until by the discovery of some ritual device the gods 
outwit them, a conception the utility of which to the priesthood who devise 
the sacrifice is obvious. 

On the other hand, the later Samhitas, if poor in their contribution to 
mythology and the higher aspects of religion, are rich in precise information 
regarding the ritual, and are veritable treasure houses of Indian magic. 
Their value in both these regards has often been under-estimated or misunder- 
stood, doubtless through hasty preconceptions of the nature of Vedic religion 
based upon the theories of mythology which at one time found their chief 
sustenance in the Rigveda. We have here given to us for at least six, and often 
probably seven or eight centuries B.c., precise details of the actual carrying 
out of rites, accompanied in many cases by the interpretation placed by 
priests on the rites. In many instances these interpretations are obviously 
purely priestly speculation, but this is by no means always the case, and at 
any rate the genuineness of the practices recorded is in the majority of cases 
free from all doubt, as they were recorded not by students of anthropology 
under the influence of theories of religion, but by priests interested in the 
practical carrying out of the sacrifices. 

It is, as in the preceding period, a question of the greatest interest to 
determine whether Indian religion in this period was subjected to any outside 
influence, and in this case the evidence for such influence, though it does not 
become of great importance, is nevertheless less impalpable than in the period 
of the Rigveda. The most important item of proof of Semitic influence is 
contained in the existence of the system of the Naksatras, ‘ lunar mansions ’, 
which appear in the Yajurveda Samhitaés and the Atharvaveda as the 
stations in which the moon spends the successive nights of the periodic month. 
The foreign origin of the Naksatras 1 is suggested by the fact that they appear 
curiously isolated in Indian literature: the Rigveda? appears not to know 
them at all, nor to contain any hint that such a system was being developed, 
while they occur in China and in Arabia under conditions which render 
derivation from India or vice versa out of the question. That the system was 
derived from Babylon seems natural, but the requisite and conclusive proof 
of its existence there has not been brought despite the probability that it 
existed. The same conclusion in favour of primitive Babylonian influence 
is suggested by the legend of the flood which is recounted for the first time in 
the Catapatha Brahmana 4 in connexion with the sage Manu, who rescued a 
fish, in return was warned by it of the danger of the flood, and in due course 


1 Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Indew, i. 409- influence on Indian magie occur in 
31; Keith, CHI. i. 148 f. Henry, La magie dans V’Inde antique, 

® Save in the late hymn, x. 85. pp. 98, 184. 

3 Oldenberg, GN. 1909, pp. 544ff.; ‘4 1i.8.1.1ff. The alleged reference in AV. 
Whitney, Oriental and Linguistic Essays, xix. 39. 8 is denied by Whitney, p. 961. 
ii. 341 ff. ; Weber, Nazatra, agree in the One is possible in JB. iii. 99 (Caland, 
Semitic theory of origin. Cf. Keith, Das JB.in Auswahl, p.313). For Vend. 


CHI. i. 140. Suggestions of Semitic ii, ef. Hertel, IIQ. ii. 35 ff. 


26 The Sources [Part I 


was towed by the fish safely over the flood to a mountain peak on which his 
ship grounded. It is not inconceivable that the story is of independent 
Indian origin, but this appears to be rather unlikely,! and in that case Babylon 
seems the obvious source, though the story may have come from some other 
part of the Semitic area. Indeed it has been urged ? that Indian writing was 
introduced via Mesopotamia about the eighth century B.c. and was based on 
the Phoenician script, having as its prototype writing of the character of that 
found on the Moabite stone,? but this conjecture is still too uncertain to be 
used as a conclusive support of Semitic influences at this time. The attempt * 
to find Sumerian influence in loha ‘ copper ’ or ‘ bronze ’ is clearly inconclu- 
sive,® though it has been suggested ° that the use of both copper and, later, iron 
came to India from Mesopotamia.’ It may be added that there is no trust- 
worthy evidence of Egyptian influence on Indian thought in the Vedic period 
despite the contentions of Prof. G. Elliot Smith in his Migrations of Early 
Culture, Influence of Ancient Egyptian Civilization in the East and in America, 
and subsequent works, who would have us believe that this is the explanation 
of the development of Indian ideas in the sixth century B. c., ignoring the 
evidence of the slow emergence of the ideas of the Upanisads and Buddhism 
from Indian conceptions. Similarly it is unwise to demand Aryan influence on 
Egypt as an explanation of the rise for a brief period of the cult of Aten, 
however tempting it may be to connect this with the apparent worship of 
Surias, the sun, among the Kassites, for the Egyptian phenomenon can be 
explained without any such hypothesis. 

No specially close relation to Iran can be definitely traced in this period, 
though the fire cult may have been influenced by that of Iran, and Iranian 
influence has been seen in the development of the meaning of Asura and in the 
names of individual Asuras,® as in the reference to incestuous unions in the 
Aitareya Brahmana.® 


» Lindner (Fesigruss an Roth, pp. 218 ff.) Haupt, ZDMG. Ixxiii. 51-79; Bauer, 


defends its Aryan origin. See, however, 
Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda*, p. 283, n. 4. 
Cf. also Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, i. 95 3 
Keith, JRAS. 1909, p. 590, n. 1; 
Gerland, Sintflut (Bonn, 1912); Win- 
ternitz, Gesch. der ind. Lit. i. 182 f., 337 ; 
J. G. Frazer, Ancient Stories of a Great 
Flood (1916). 


Zur Entzifferung der neuent. Sinaischrift. 


About 850 B. c.; Hall, Anc. Hist. of Near 


East, p. 451. 


* Feist, Kultur der Indogermanen, pp. 71, 


199 ; von Schroeder, Arische Religion, 
i. 225, 238. For conjectures as to 
taimata and urugiilad (AV. v. 18. 6, 8), 
see Bhandarkar Comm. Vol., pp. 33 f. 


* Buhler, Indian Studies, III, and Palaeo- * See Chap. 29 for a conjecture as to the 
graphie (1896); CHI. i. 62. Rhys Babylonian origin of the cosmic 
Davids (Buddhist India, p. 114) prefers character of speech (Vac, Logos). 

a pre-Semitic Euphratean origin via ¢ CHI. i. 615. 

Dravidian traders. For the theory of 7 On hriidu (AV.), see Vedic Indez, ii. 509. 
ultimate Egyptian origin see K. Sethe, * See below, Chap. 15, § 1. 

GN. Gesch. Mitth. 1916, pp. 88-161; ° vii. 13, but cf. JB. ii. 113 for an Indian 
Phil-Hist. 1917, pp. 437-7 ; Lehmann- rite. 


CHAPTER 3 


THE LATER LITERATURE 


For the latest stages of the Vedic religion on its practical side the 
authorities are the Crauta and the Grhya Sitras,! which deal with different 
but complementary spheres, and which incidentally preserve for us a con- 
siderable amount of formulae, prose and verse, which by accident or other 
cause have not found a place in any of the Samhitas preserved to us. 
The necessity of some manuals for the actual practice of the great com- 
plicated rites of the sacrifice must have been felt from an early period, 
but we have not now extant any of these manuals. The Crauta Sitras 
which are now extant are all without exception later than the older 
Brahmanas, and, while the ritual which they reveal is in general harmony 
with that. supposed by the Brahmanas, it would be idle to suppose that 
it actually represents it with perfect accuracy. This can be seen by one 
simple point: the Brahmanas often show that on questions of the exact 
mode of the performance of certain rites there were considerable difference of 
opinions: in some cases the Brahmanas reject definitely certain views, in 
others they allow varied views to stand as equally legitimate, but in the 
Siitras in the great majority of such cases merely one view is laid down, the 
others having presumably come to be disapproved in the school in which the 
Sitra arose. On the other hand, the Siittras often give optional forms of 
procedure for which the Brahmanas contain no hint, evidence of the develop- 
ment of practice in the schools. Moreover, there is clear proof that no Stitra 
represents rigidly any one Samhita: even when, as is normal, a Sitra follows 
generally some Samhita it is quite ready to accept portions of its material 
from another. The Sitras, therefore, while often giving valuable confirma- 
tion and explanation of the Brahmanas, cannot be regarded as contemporary 
evidence of the practices of the Brahmanas, and this conclusion based entirely 
on the ritual is confirmed by many lines of evidence. In addition to dealing 
with many rites which seem clearly elaborations and modifications of older 
rites, the Sitras in language are markedly more modern than the Brahmanas, 
approximating closely to the classical speech, from which they differ in the 
main in the use of forms of incorrect grammatical formation. From this 
fact a conclusion may fairly be drawn with regard to their chronology: it 


1 The Dharma Sitras, unquestionably later descent from the Brahmanas is asserted 
on the whole than the Grhya Sitras, are by Caland, Das Srautasiitra des Apa- 
valuable as confirming the latter, but stamba, pp. 1 ff., but this is not certain, 
the age of new matter in them is nor very probable. 
doubtfully Vedic. 8 Wackernagel, Altind. Gramm. i. pp. 

* e.g. Apastamba uses the other Sarmhitas xxxii ff. 


as well as the Taittiriya. A direct 


28 The Sources [Part I 


can scarcely be supposed that works, not popular in character, which so flatly 
disregard in some points the rules of Panini, should have been produced after 
the general acceptance of the authority of that grammarian, which falls pro- 
bably in the third century B. c. at latest, and thus the period of the Sitras 
may be roughly set down at from 400 B.c. to 200 B.c., though neither date 
can be regarded as more than approximate.! 

Of the two sets of Sitras the Crauta deal with the elaborate forms of the 
ritual in which the presence of a priest, and usually of several, was necessary, 
while the Grhya Sitras deal with the household ritual, most of which could be 
performed by the householder for himself without extrinsic aid of any kind. 
In all probability the literary development of the household ritual was later 
than that of the Crauta ritual. It is, of course, perfectly obvious that domestic 
rites must be as old as any form of religion, but there is a clear difference 
between this fact and the question of the date of the application to the 
simpler rites of literary forms, and the verses which are associated with the 
Grhya ritual show clear traces in language and metre of not belonging to 
the earliest stage of Vedic poetry. On the other hand, in the case of the 
existing Stitras, they are compositions emanating from schools which were 
interested no less in the Grhya than in the Crauta ritual, and the normal 
school manual seems to have embraced both topics. If the portions dealing 
with the two different topics were of different dates, the fact can hardly now 
be detected? 

Of the extant Sutras of the Rigveda there are two complete collections, the 
Acvalayana and the (ankhayana Crauta and Grhya Siitras: the former is 
undoubtedly the older, and its reputed author may be assigned with reason- 
able probability to about 400 B.c.3 The Samaveda has the Crauta Sitras of 
Magaka, Latyayana and Drahyayana, and Grhya Sitras by Jaimini, Gobhila, 
and Khadira. In the case of the Black Yajurveda Sitras are especially fre- 
quent, including the very important Manava, the Baudhayana, Bharadvaja, 
Apastamba and Hiranyakegi, covering both the field of Crauta and Grhya 
rites: the White Yajurveda is represented by the Katyayana Crauta Sitra 
and the Paraskara Grhya Siitra.t The Atharvaveda has the most important 
in some way of all the Siittras, the Kaucika, which is invaluable as bearing 
a very close relation to the text of the Veda, and preserving in many cases 
what seem perfectly accurate accounts of the magic rites which were accom- 


‘ Keith, JRAS. 1909, p. 591, n. 2; Tait- * Keith, JRAS. 1907, p- 411; 1909, p. 591, 


tirtya Samhita, i. pp. xlv, xlvi ; Rigveda n. 1; Taittirtya Samhita, i. pp. xlv f., 
Brahmanas, p. 44; Hopkins (CHI. i. elxxii ff. The author of the (CS. and 
249) places ApDS. in the second cen- CGS. is Suyajia, and there is a parallel 
tury B.c. to the (GS. in the Cambavya Grhya 
* Oldenberg, SBE. xxix and xxx. On the Sitra (Oldenberg, SBE. xxix. 4 ff.; IS. 
other hand, the Siitras are often clearly xv. 4 ff.); (GS. v and vi are late. 
interpolated, alluding to later customs, 4 Definitely late are the Vaikhanasa and 
e.g. the lunar tithi, and the practice Varaha Sitras. The Vadhila may be 
of marking the body with sectarian earlier; for Katha texts, cf. Caland, 


marks. Bradhmana en Siitra-Aanwinsten (1920). 


Chap. 3] The Later Literature 29 


panied by the formulae in the text: when the Atharvavedins became 
desirous of assimilating their Veda in every possible manner to the three older 
Vedas, they invented an orthodox Crauta Sitra, the Vaitana, to accompany 
it, and from the Vaitana more directly and indirectly from the Kaucika is 
derived much of the matter of the curious work, the Gopatha Brahmana, 
which poses as the Brahmana of the Atharvaveda, and which, borrowing 
largely from the Aitareya and Catapatha Brahmanas with other texts, is in 
essence a pamphlet in exaltation of the Brahman priest and the Atharvaveda.! 
The date of this remarkable composition is unknown : it is of course more than 
possible that some of its material is old, even when it is not borrowed from 
existing texts, for an enormous amount of Vedic literature has been lost, 
some within quite recent times. 

Beside the Crauta and the Grhya Sitras stand the Dharma Siitras, which 
are more specially devoted to customary law, but which frequently contain 
references to religion: of these the oldest and most important are those of 
Gautama, Baudhayana, Apastamba, and Vasistha,? but with them and still 
more with the later law books we pass from the ideas of Vedic religion to those 
of Hinduism, though the change is of course gradual and without any sharp 
break. The Grhya and Dharma Sitras, however, are of special value as 
preserving for us the more domestic side of the religion practised by the 
ordinary householder, as opposed to the great sacrifices which were confided 
to the hands of the priests. 

The rest of the literature is of less importance. Some value attaches to the 
Buddhist texts, especially such works as the Petthavatthu, which gives 
a fullness of view on the question of the state of the dead according to the 
popular belief which has every sign of age and genuine tradition. But, though 
these texts undoubtedly have in them much popular belief, the date of the 
Buddhist canon is now no longer to be placed so high as was once held, when 
it was believed that much of the canon really represented views prevalent in 
the time of the Buddha, and the use of Buddhist evidence for the Vedic 
period must therefore be subject to the most close scrutiny.4/ The same con- 
sideration applies to the great epics. The redaction of the Mahabharata was 
not completed in all probability until the fourth century a.pD. and possibly 
even later: its earliest form cannot now be restored,° and its evidential value 
for the period up to 500 B. c. is, therefore, of controversial character, and the 


Cf. Keith, Taittiriya Samhita, i. pp. Spirits (1923). 
elxix f.; Rigveda Bradhmanas, pp. x, ‘ Franke, JPTS. 1908, pp. 1-80; VOJ. xx. 
45. 337 ; Keith, JRAS. 1909, p. 577 ; 1910, 

® For the late date of Vasistha see Hopkins, p- 216; Buddhist Philosophy, ch. i. 
CHI. i. 249, against Biihler, SBE. xiv. ° Hopkins, The Great Epic of India (1899) ; 
p- xvii. The Arthagastra, alleged to be Ere Myth.) ppt ts 3) CHI. 1. 258 ; 
of c. 300 B.c., is much later; Keith, Winternitz, Gesch. der ind. Lit. i. 396; 
JRAS. 1916, pp. 130 ff.; 1920, p. 628 ; iii. 627 ; Lévi, Bhandarkar Comm. Vol., 
Jolly’s ed. (Lahore, 1923). pp. 99 f.; JA. 1915, 1.122. Cf. Dumeé- 


> See B. C. Law, The Buddhist Conception of zil, Le Festin d@ Immortalité, pp. x, 4 ff. 


30 The Sources [Part I 


Ramayana, which may in its origin belong to the fourth century B.c., has been 
subjected to much later recasting.1 

From the nature of the sources it follows that for the period up to 500 B. c. 
there is a continuous stream of trustworthy literary evidence, and that after 
that date the sources are of less value. The care taken to compose and pre- 
serve Sutras for centuries after that period shows the vitality of the Vedic 
religion : indeed in much later times the great sacrifices of antiquity, such as 
the horse sacrifice, were performed by kings desirous of asserting their high 
prowess, and in families of priests many of the other rites prevailed down to 
at least the nineteenth century. But the old order of things was greatly 
affected by the rise of Buddhism, which was indeed but one of many con- 
flicting sects, but which attained under the patronage of Acoka in the third 
century B.c. a leading place among religions in India. The inroads of 
foreigners from the north-west, which, commenced by Alexander, repelled for 
a time by Candragupta and his successors, became constant and effective 
from the second century B.c., aided in the disintegration of the religion, and 
materially promoted the development of that popular religion centred in the 
worship of Civa and Visnu respectively, which was noted by Megasthenes as 
the leading feature of Indian religion when he stayed at Pataliputra as the 
Ambassador of Seleukos to Candragupta.*? Moreover, it must be remembered 
that throughout this period the Hinduization of the people was proceeding : 
the process in question can still be observed at the present day in operation 
amongst the wild tribes, and in the period B. c. it may confidently be assumed 
that it was being carried on upon even a greater scale, nor is it wonderful that 
thus the Vedic religion should gradually lose its distinctive features and 
assume new forms. 

The difficulties of applying information derived from the later texts is 
adequately illustrated by the case of the use of idols.* The epic ° shows clearly 
and indubitably the use of idols of the gods, and both it and Manu mention 
Devalakas, persons who carry idols about, while the grammarian Panini ° 
recognizes the use of the name of a god to denote his idol. On the other hand, 
it is perfectly clear that save in the latest stratum of the Vedic literature” 
idols are not recognized in cult, and then only in the domestic ritual. What 
conclusion is to be drawn from such facts ? Are we to suppose that idols were 


* Keith, JRAS. 1915, pp. 318-28 ; Winter- Bloch, ZDMG. Ixii. 651; Macdonell, 
nitz, op. cit. i. 439 ; iii. 680 ; Lévi, JA. Journ. R. Soc. Arts, 1909, p. 317. 
1918, i. 5 ff. 5 Hopkins, Epic Myth., pp. 72 ff. 

* Cf. the modern Agnihotris; Hillebrandt, ‘*v. 3. 99, with Patafjali; Ludwig, 
Ved. Myth., p. 54, n. 1. Festgruss an Roth, pp. 57 ff. ; Kielhorn, 

* The representation of deities in human VOJ. i. 8 ff.; Konow, IA. xxxviii. 
form is also probably to be ascribed 145 ff.; Charpentier, JRAS. 19138, 
to Greek influence ; cf. Bloch, ZDMG. pp. 671 ff. 

Ixii. 648 ff.; A. Foucher, The Beginnings * Adbhutabrahmana (Weber, Omina und 
of Buddhist Art, pp. 1 ff.; Thomas, Portenta, pp. 335 ff.) ; PGS. iii. 4. 9 are 
CHI. i. 480. clear; cf. PGS. iii. 14. 8; Gautama, 


‘ Arbman, Rudra, pp. 82 ff. Contrast ix. 12; ApDS. i. 30. 22. 


Chap. 3] The Later Interature ol 


really in popular use among the Vedic tribes, but were not approved by the 
exclusive Brahmans, to whom we owe the texts ? It may be observed that 
when we take the ritual as a whole there is very little sign of the alleged 
exclusiveness of the Brahmans, whose character in this regard is assumed 
through the error of treating the Rigveda and the speculations of the Brah- 
manas as completely representing their views. Other causes are equally 
possible and more plausible. The use of idols may have been influenced by the 
non-Aryan population, as it gradually became assimilated ; it may have used 
them and had fixed sanctuaries before the advent of the Aryans, whose lack 
of idols or sanctuaries may either have been primitive or induced by their 
migrations, which uprooted their local connexions. Or the use may have been 
a natural innovation within the Vedic circle of tribes, or introduced through 
contact with non-Vedic Aryans. There is no proof that the Indo-Europeans 
practised the use of idols, and the evidence of German religion ! suggests that 
the position there as certainly in Iran ? was much as in Vedic India, and it is, 
therefore, perhaps more plausible to believe that their employment gradually 
developed in India itself, though under what influences we simply do not know. 
This is certainly more legitimate than to suppose an idolatrous people and an 
exclusive priesthood. What, however, is essential is to note that Vedic 
religion is normally aniconic, for the interest of any religious system largely 
depends on what is peculiar and distinctive and not on that vast mass of 
beliefs which it must possess in common with other religions. 


1 Cf. Helm, Altgerm. Rel. i. 216 ff., 287 f. Indo-Européens, p. 233. 
On Greek religion see de Visser, Di¢ 2 Moulton, Harly Zoroastrianism, pp. 67 f., 
nichtmenschengestaltigen Gotter der 391. 


Griechen, pp. 31 ff. Cf. Carnoy, Les 


CHAPTER 4 
THE AVESTA AND COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY 
$1. The Avesta 


WHILE the literary evidences for Vedic religion are of quite exceptional 
value and importance, it must be admitted that of other material for realizing 
the mode in which the gods were conceived there is none available :1 we have 
not the statues and other forms of representation, such as paintings, coins, 
seals, statuettes, &c., which are of such value in the case of Greek religion. 
No Indian art products or coins of the early Vedic period have been dis- 
covered, and that any should so be discovered is most improbable. On the 
other hand, great value attaches to the Avesta as a source for the understand- 
‘ing of Vedic religion. The close similarity in form of the Avestan language 
‘and the Vedic is beyond all doubt : certain changes in sounds 2 make indeed 
‘an apparent external divergence, but the vocabulary, the formation of 
words, and the syntax correspond with much exactitude, and, what is even 
more important, the verses of the Avesta often breathe the same religious 
spirit as those of the Rigveda. The similarity of religious views in the pre- 
Zoroastrian period must have been of the most close and striking type: 
the prose formulae of the Veda no less than the verses show a profound like- 
ness of form and content, and the practical identity of modes of thought 
between Iran and India is sufficiently indicated by the striking parallelism 
between the form of parts of the Buddhist canon and the Iranian literature. 
The extraordinary similarity of view as of speech, indeed, makes it hard to 
believe in any early separation of these two branches of the Indo-European 
family, and suggests that they must have continued to be in close touch with 
one another until a comparatively late period, when the advance of the Vedic 
section towards India interposed difficulties of communication between them 
and the Iranian tribes, and gave a decisive turn to divergences of view which 
were beginning to form themselves in the Aryan community. The divergence 
from the common religion of the still undivided Aryans is clearly far greater 
in the case of the Avesta: there is no good ground to doubt that its present 
form is the result of the definite individuality of Zoroaster at a comparatively 
late date,’ though doubtless he merely brought to a head tendencies which had 


* Jouveau-Dubreuil’s Vedic Antiquities of the Avestan sounds, which is now 
affords nothing of more than specula- under revision by Wackernagel and 
tive value ; see also Marshall, CHI. i. others ; Andreas, GN. 1909, pp. 42 ff. ; 
616 as to the alleged burial mounds of 1911, pp. 1 ff. ; cf. Bartholomae, VOJ. 
Lauriyaé Nandangarh ; Arch. Survey of xxiv. 129 ff. 

India Rep. 1904-5, pp. 38 ff. 8’ For a theory of Israelite influence, see 


* Exaggerated in the ordinary transcription Pettazzoni, La Religione di Zarathustra, 


Chap, 4] The Avesta 33 


been developing before his time. Under that change much of the old Aryan 
mythology disappeared or was deeply altered, and it is, therefore, the more 
remarkable that so much similarity should remain. 

The figure of Ahura Mazdah cannot possibly 1 be dissociated from Varuna 
who bears the epithet Asura, the term applied to other Vedic gods, while in 
the later Samhitas the Asuras have become the foes of the gods. Like Ahura, 
Varuna is the lord of holy order, Rta, which corresponds to the Avestan A§Sa : 
he is closely united with Mitra, as Ahura with Mithra, the sun-god : he is the 
chief of the Adityas as deities of light, as Ahura is connected with the AmeSa 
Spentas,? who like the Adityas are not at first fixed in number: Varuna 
guards the sun from falling and makes it a path wherein to wander along the 
heaven, as Ahura keeps the earth from falling and provides the sun with a 


— 


pathway. But, apart from these coincidences, the mere moral grandeur of | 


both deities can only be explained by a common origin : the history of Varuna 
in India is that of moral elevation which gradually disappears, and the god 
sinks to a mere god of the waters, of quite secondary importance. It is in- 
conceivable that this fact should be explained in any other way than that as a 
god he was brought to India, when under less favourable circumstances his 
moral quality evaporated. This theory, moreover, renders it easy to under- 
stand the success of the Zoroastrian faith and its choice of Ahura as the great 
and only god in the proper sense of the term: it was not a creation, but a 
purification of a conception existing among the people of Iran. The loss of the 
name Varuna is natural enough, and it is now probable that we actually have 
a record of the period when Varuna and Mitra were Aryan or Iranian gods in 
the list of the gods of Mitanni, referred to above. The same list contains the 
name of Indra, and supports the view that this deity was Aryan, for the same 
conclusion is irresistibly suggested by the fact that the Avesta knows a 
demon Indra, and a genius of victory whose name Verethraghna is unmistak- 
ably equivalent to Vrtrahan, the epithet par excellence of Indra, as slayer of 
Vrtra his greatest foe. We do not know the precise steps of the process by 
which Indra fell from honour among the Iranians: there was, however, an 


obvious incompatibility of temper between the moral and stately Varuna and | 


the impetuous war god Indra, which comes out even in the Rigveda, but 


pp. 82 ff., and a criticism by Keith, 
SEsaeexiioe Ot. see ee VV.) Lhomas 
(JRAS. 1916, p. 364) suggests that 
Asura came from Assyria and that 
Zoroastrianism is a moralizing Assyrian 
creed; the difficulty is to find its 
Assyrian parallel. 


1 Hillebrandt (Ved. Myth. iii. 11) denied 


this, but the argument is incredible ; 
ef. Oldenberg, ZDMG. 1. 48; Meyer, 
Gesch. des Alt. I. ii. pp. 913, 921. 


“ See B. Geiger, Die Amesa Spentas (Wien, 


1916). The & really is a mere mis- 


3 [w.0.s. 31] 


5 Oldenberg, 


representation, Andreas and Wacker- 
nagel, GN. 1911, p. 3, n. 1; contrast 
Bartholomae, VOJ. xxiv. 173. 

JRAS. 1909, pp. 1090-5 ; 
Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, p. 69. 
The theory that the Iranian genius is 
the genuine old Sondergott of War, and 
Vrtra an Indian creation, through a 
misunderstanding of the term ‘ assault 
repelling’, is quite unacceptable. The 
old Armenian deity Vahagn defeats 
dragons ; Hillebrandt, Ved. Myih. iii. 
188 f. 


34 The Sources [Part I 


in India there was no religious reformation to regard Indra as the inferior 
deity and reduce him to the rank of a demon. 

The identity of Ahura and Varuna lends great probability to the identifica- 
tion of the Ame%a Spenta and the Adityas. It is true that no great stress can 
be laid on the number seven, which is not certainly primitive and may be 
ethnic in significance, but it is a reasonable view that the highly etherialized 
and spiritualized conceptions of the AmeSa Spenta are merely the reflex of 
the more substantial though still abstract deities, the Adityas. It must be 
noted that in India also these gods are not in essence personifications of nature, 
but, as their names denote, represent activities of human life, and the Iranian 
development in their case is a natural parallel to the refinement of the 
character of Asura into something far above the average god; moreover 
-Bhaga, the giver of good things, one of the Adityas, bears a name which in 
Iranian as Bagha denotes a god in general. The identity of Mitra with Mithra 
is patent and undeniable, Iran seems to have known Dyaus,! and there are as 
clear identities in minor figures such as that of Apam Napat, and Apam 
Napat, Gandharva and Gandarewa, Kreanu and Keresani, both of whom 
appear in connexion with the Soma, Vayu and Vayu, a genius of air, Trita 
Aptya, and the two forms, Thrita and Athwya. The Avesta and Rigveda 
agree in the terms Yatu and Druj (Druh) as applied to evil spirits. Still more 
interesting is the parallelism of Yama, son of Vivasvant, the first of men and 
ruler of paradise, with Yima, son of Vivanhvant. The waters and plants as 
deities are invoked by both. 

Quite as striking are the similarities in the cult. In both India and Iran 
a priest called Hotr or Zaotar must originally have been the chief performer, 
the name denoting the act of offering the libation. The fire cult produced the 
Atharvan priest of India, the Athravan of Iran, though Agni seems a specifically 
Indian development,” a fact which explains perhaps why he does not appear 
with Mitra and Varuna, Indra and the Nasatyas in the list of gods of the 
Mitanni. The sacrifice bears the same name Yajiia and Yasna respectively, 
and many other words used in the ritual correspond. More important still is 
the fact that the Soma is celebrated by the singers in both lands as the plant 
that grows on the mountains, watered by the rain of heaven, and brought by 
the eagle. It was in both lands pressed, and the juice passed through a sieve 
and then mixed with milk. But the deposition of Indra, who in India is the 
Soma drinker par excellence, from that place of honour in Iran, has resulted in 
the alteration of the old ritual of the drinking of the Soma by the god and then 
by the priests. Both peoples too at one time spread a strew, Barhis or 
+ Herodotos (i. 181) asserts that the Iranian name in MHerodotos, who 

Persians called the whole circle of the naturally uses the Greek term. 

heaven Zeus, probably not an allusion * Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, pp. 70, 71. 

to Ahura; Spiegel, Eran, Alt.ii.15; von * Moulton (op. cit., pp. 71-3) adopts the 

Schroeder, Arische Religion, ii. 338 ff. ; view that the opinion of Zoroaster was 


Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, pp.391f. definitely hostile to Haoma, while in 
We need not seek to find the actual the West the original intoxicating 


Chap. 4] The Avesta 35 


Baresman, for the god to sit upon when he came to receive their offerings, and 
the old term spread (stereta) was preserved by the Iranians even after they had 
ceased altogether to conceive of the idea of the god coming to seat himself at 
the sacrifice. In both countries the pious offerer is styled the man who has 
spread the strew; in both again the service of praise consisted in large 
measure of hymns, whose close similarity of language and thought has already 
been noted. | 

The similarity of the concept of moral order, Rta or ASa, has been also} 


noted: the names of the Mitanni kings afford to us curiously enough the | 


proof that the term Arta was known in the fourteenth century B.c. at the 
latest. The form Arta is of special interest as it does not show the sound 
change of the Avesta, if indeed that be real and not a mere mistranscription ; 
it may of course have belonged to the Iranian of pre-Avestan date, or it may 
have been an Aryan dialectical form, but at any rate the vitality and age of the 
idea are thus early established. Moreover, the idea of Rta is one which, like 
the moral elevation of Varuna, has no future history in India, pointing irresis- 
tibly to the view that it was not an Indian creation, but an inheritance which 
did not long survive its new milieu. 

Another conception, of minor importance, but of interest, which survived 
in the Avesta, is the conception of thirty-three gods. The origin of the idea 
is wholly unknown in the Rigveda, where neither for eleven nor for thirty- 

hree is any explanation available, and this points to its great antiquity. But 
beyond this we cannot go: the effort of Hopkins ! to evolve the number eleven 
from a primitive ten, and to find a circle of ten gods known to India, Greece, 
and Teutonic mythology must be regarded as unsuccessful: the Greek 
number is not very early, and is twelve, and no legitimate means of reducing 
it to ten is known, and even twelve is not Homeric, while the Teutonic circle 
of twelve is so late as to be certainly no more than a mere borrowing.? 


The curious phenomenon that in Iran the gods of India appear as demons, | 
while in India the Asuras as demons are contrasted with the great Ahura | 


Mazdah, has naturally given rise to much discussion: the simplest view, that 
the divergence of terminology arose directly from a religious split among 
the tribes caused by the Zoroastrian reforms which led to the differen- 
tiation of the two as Indian and Iranian, is now usually admitted not to be 
tenable ; but the terminology has been thought to reflect hostile conflicts 
between Iranians and Indians in times after the two nations had developed 
separate lives.2 For this view we would have good authority if we could 
accept the identification * of a mysterious Gaotema who is found in the 


plant was replaced by a harmless one, * See below, Part IT, Chap. 15, § 1. 


which was not drunk. * Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, p. 28. 
1 Oriental Studies, pp. 1538, 154. His further suggestion that the demons 
2 Golther, German. Myth., p. 200; for Indra, Saurva (=(Carva), and Naon- 
Greece, see Farnell, Cults of the Greek haithya are due to this later contact of 
States, i. 84, 85; ef. also Keith, JRAS. Indra and Iran is quite untenable, On 
1916, pp. 850-6. an alleged Zoroastrian period of Indian 


rate 


\ 
i 


36 The Sources [Part I 


Yast,1 and who was, it has been asserted, none other than Gautama Buddha. 
The identification, however, rests merely on the similarity of name, and this 
being the case, and the name being an old Indian one, it is perfectly clear 
that it should not be used for serious argument.? Still less seriously can we 
take the suggestion that the Buddhist religion was really suggested to the 
Buddha from an outside source, and that not Aryan. The effort * to show 
that Buddhism was Tibetan in origin, and the Buddha a Mongolian of 
Girkha type, by such evidence as that of the form of the Stipa, and 
the alleged Tibetan affinities of the Vajjis or Licchavis, or the equation of 
Cakya with non-Aryan* Scyths, and the prevalence of Mongolian feature 
types on Barhut and Sanchi sculptures, is wholly fantastic, and certainly 
affords no reason to see any close intercourse with Iran in any early period. 
Of such intercourse the Vedic literature affords no clear evidence at all: the 
most that can be said is that the energy with which the fire cult was practised 
in the north according to the testimony of the Catapatha Brahmana may be 
accounted for by the proximity of the north-west to Iran, and the difference 
between the two forms of fire cult is so great as to render even this conclusion 
uncertain and precarious. 


§ 2. Comparative Mythology and Religion 


While in the case of the Avesta clear aid is available for the study of Vedic 
rcligion, comparatively little can be gained from the comparison of other 
Indo-European systems of religion.® The reason for this fact is not any doubt 
that the Indo-Europeans before the separation of the race, in whatever way 
this took place, had a religious system: every probability points in this 
direction, but the question of the exact form of this system eludes scientific 
decision. The evidence as to the nature of Greek religion is large in quantity, 
and much of it is old, but it is perfectly certain that in Greece the Hellenes 
settled among men of another race and culture who had already developed a 
high or at least elaborate form of religion, and the Indo-European con- 
stituents of Greek religion are difficult to detect, and have been very variously 
estimated. Roman religion is partly obnoxious to the same defect and partly 
only known to us at a late date. For Celtic, German, Lettish, Lithuanian, 


history, see Keith, JRAS. 1916, as 
pp. 138 ff., and ef. the articles in the 


Mongolian practices which are 
Iranian and nomadic, this tendency 


Modern Review (1916), xix. 373 ff., 
490 ff., 597 ff. 

xiii. 16. 

> Keith, JRAS. 1915, p. 798. 

’ Rawlinson, JBRAS. xxiii. 228, 224; 
Vincent Smith, IA. xxxii. 234; Ozford 
Hist. of India, pp. 47 ff. See B. C. Law, 
Ksatriya Tribes of Ancient India, 
pp. 25 ff. 

* Even Minns (Scythians and Greeks, 
pp. 85 ff.) has been misled into taking 


1 


reaching the absurdity of deriving 
Papaios= Zeus (Herodotos, iv. 59) from 
Uralo-Altaic baba, ignoring Phrygian 
Papas. 

Schrader’s account (ERE. ii. 11 ff.) is 
ingenious, but most of his conclusions 
are not proven. See also Carnoy, Les 
Indo-Européens, chaps. xix and xx; 
L. von Schroeder, Arische Religion. 

®° Warde Fowler, Religious Experience of the 

Roman People, p. viii. 


Pl 8 


Chap. 4] Comparative Mythology and Religion 37 


and Slavonic religion we are practically ! dependent on very late sources, and 
in all these cases again we cannot be sure of what are the Indo-European 
elements. As a rule, therefore, these religions can serve merely as other non- 
Indo-European religions serve, as sources of comparison with a view to explain- 


ing parallel customs and usages by the operation of the same ideas : they do \ 


not enable us to conclude that an Indian usage was actually brought by the | 


Vedic Indians with them into India as part of their own religion. In many 
cases this was doubtless the case, but the lack of conclusive evidence renders it 
necessary to admit that certainty cannot be obtained. 

There are a few cases where the parallelism existing among the words 
used by the different Indo-European peoples gives us the right to conclude 


the existence of a common worship. Thus we know that the conception of the | 


H 
i 


gods as heavenly is Indo-European and that there existed the figure of | 


Dyaus Pitr, the Greek Zeus Pater, the Latin Jupiter : 2 the similarity of this 
god as concerned with the thunder with the German Donar ? and Norse Thorr 
is clear : moreover his connexion with the oak as at Dodona has a plausible 
parallel in Jupiter feretrius, in the Lithuanian Perktinas,‘ the Slav Perunu,°® 
perhaps the Phrygian Bagaios,® and also among the Celts 7 and the Germans, 
a fact which has recently been brilliantly explained by Warde Fowler, con- 
firming the older views of Grimm, as directly due to the observation that the 
lightning strikes the oak far oftener than any other European forest tree. But 
this very case shows how little can be won for Indian religion: Dyaus is a 


faint and shadowy figure in Indian mythology, and it is impossible not to | 


remember that in Aegean religion in Greece and in Asia Minor, whose con- 
nexion with Europe in religious matters was close before the rise of any of the 
Aryan religions in Europe, a thunder god is a conspicuous figure. 

A still more striking case of the difficulty of using comparative mythology 
is afforded by the cult of fire. Among the Greeks Hestia, among the Romans 
Vesta, though her worship has been asserted to be merely derived from Greece, 
and among the Lithuanians Ugnis Szventa, seem to have been the object of 
deep veneration as the goddess of the family hearth. Of this worship we have 
a parallel in India, where the fire is among other names called the household 
fire, and where its sanctity is great in the extreme. But the difference of sex 
shows that there is a long way between the two conceptions, and suggests that 


1 There are important notices of Scythian * According to Feist (op. cit., p. 482) a loan 


religion in Herodotos (i. 216; iv.59, &c.), word from Gallic Tanaros. Contrast 
of German in Caesar (BG, vi. 21) and Helm, op. cit. i. 278. Cf. Rhys, Celtic 
Tacitus’s Germania, and of the Slavs in Heathendom, pp. 57 ff. for Celtic 
Procopius (iii. 14. 22 ff.). parallels. 


2 The OHG. Ziu cannot be compared with ‘ Cf. Gray, Myth. of All Races, iii. 358, n. 24. 
certainty ; it is parallel rather with ° Cf. Machal, ibid. iii. 295; von Schroeder, 


deva; Kretschmer, Gesch. d. Griech. Arische Religion, i. 545 f. 

Sprache, p. 73; Moulton, Early Zoroas- * Von Schroeder (op. cit. i. 288, n.2, 553, 
trianism, p. 393,n.; Feist, Kultur der n. 1) insists on connecting Bagaios 
Indogermanen, p. 344. But cf. Helm, with Bogu. 


Altgerm, Rel. i. 270 ff. 7 Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, pp. 218 ff. 


38 The Sources [Part I 


the worship of fire in Indo-European times was animatist rather than anthropo- 
morphic. Similarly, while the worship of the earth is doubtless to be found 
in every Indo-European form of religion, there is nothing so characteristic of 
that worship to enable us to ascribe to it any special feature in Indo-European 
times, and the union of sky and earth is a world-wide myth, which we certainly 
need not suppose the Indo-Europeans had to borrow from any other source.? 
The worship of sun and moon may be assumed, and is probable enough, but 
it was perhaps of no very great moment. The waters also were objects of 
worship, and the wind god is found under the same name among the Lithua- 
nians as in India, and that people has a celestial smith parallel to Tvastr. 
There are also cases in which identity of myth is of real importance: the 
Nasatya of India occur among the Mitanni gods, they are undoubtedly 
parallel to the Dioskouroi and to the gods of a Lettish myth,? and they seem 
to have Germanic and Celtic parallels. Again, while the etymological equation 
of Erinys and the Vedic Saranyii is open to the gravest doubt, there can be 
little probability in denying any connexion between the legend of Saranyii’s 
wedding and her taking the shape of a mare, and the legend of the Tilphossian 
_ Erinys.? Herakles or Hercules is not Indra, but the myth of the setting free 
of the cows from the control of the Panis has a clear parallel in the myths 
_ regarding Geryoneus and Cacus. If the verbal identification of Cabara and 
' Kerberos is not above suspicion, still the mythical conception is parallel, and 
in a different case that of Kubera and the Kabeiroi Prof. Hopkins has sought, 
though probably without success,‘ to prove original identity of character as 
well as similarity of name. Other cases in which etymological identity of name 
is still claimed with a possibility of accuracy, though without any certainty, 
include the equation of Varuna and Ouranos, which could both arise from 
Indo-European Uoruenos, the Maruts and Mars, the Rbhus and the Norse 
Alfr, German Alb, elf, and the Bhrgus and Phlegyai. Even Prometheus, 
though the connexion with the late pramantha, ‘ churning stick’, has long 
since been abandoned, has been identified by the high, though in this case not 
convincing, authority of Victor Henry * with the Mathava who, according 
to the Catapatha Brahmana ® played a prominent part in the advance of the 
Indian fire cult from the western to the eastern lands, and it is certain that the 
legend of the theft of fire has a claim to be Indo-European.’ In the case of 
Usas the parallelism with Eos and Aurora is wholly beyond doubt, but the 
actual worship of the goddess is clearly in large measure an Indian develop- 
ment. Vedic Druh, Avestan Druj, have parallels in Norse Draug and Old 
English Dredg, ‘ malignant spirit ’. 
* Cf. Dieterich, Mutter Erde, pp. 92 ff. ie LO Git: 
* Mannhardt, Die lettischen Sonnenmythen. * JAOS. xxxiii. 55 ff. 

Wide’s view (Lak. Kulte, p.316) tothe > La magie dans l Inde antique, p. 21. 

contrary is, I think, clearly wrong; cf. ¢ i, 4.1. LOSE 

Gray, Myth. of All Races, iii. 820 ff. 7 It is also widely diffused; cf. von 


* Lang, Modern Mythology, pp. 65-8 ; Schroeder, Arische Religion, ii. 224 ff., 
Max Miller, Beitr. zu einer wiss. Myth. 566, 586 f. 


Chap. 4] Comparative Mythology and Religion 39 


One important fact regarding the early cult is practically certain: it is 
expressly recorded of the Persians, the Scyths, the Romans, and the Germans, 
and it is clear in the case of India, that no images or temples were used in the 
worship of their deities : the evidence of Greek religion in this case is plainly 
negligible, since we have the evidence of Aegean archaeology for the repre- 
sentation of deities long before the Greek invasion, and the fact that Homer in 
the main ignores images is an indication that the Indo-European religion was 
not in itself primarily iconic: the image and the temple alike are associated 
naturally with the city state which, it is certain, was not a primitive Indo- 
European form of society. On the other hand the gods were often revered 
in groves, a development of primitive tree worship which is recorded for 
India, Greece, Rome, Germany, Gaul, the Lithuanians and the Slavs, but we 
have no proof that the practice of treating first a dead tree, and then a shaped 
trunk, as the abode of the god, was Indo-European : it seems to have been a 
development in the separate peoples. The practice of paying worship on the 
mountain tops, which is recorded of Italians, Persians, and Bithynians, is also 
a usage which must have grown up severally among those parts of the Indo- 
European people who dwelt in lands of mountains.+ 

The question whether the Indo-European period knew a regular priest- 
hood, or whether the householder was still his own priest, is impossible of 
decision, in the absence of any identity of name in the different speeches. The 
identity of the Indian Brahman with the Latin Flamen is not beyond reason- 
able doubt,” but the exact force of the terms is doubtful, and in any case the 
possibility of separate development is considerable in the case of so partial a 
similarity. The origin of the priesthood has been seen in the need of confedera- 
tions of clans for those to care for the worship of the guardian deity of the 
federation, and in the Greek Selloi of Dodona, who with unwashed feet 
served Zeus, has been seen such a family ; the name has also been compared 
with the Latin Salii, but without cogency. In Roman religion we find from 
a very early period groups of priests, and a strong priesthood—possibly not of 
Indo-European origin—existed among the Celts,? and also among the 
Prussians. It is probable that Caesar 4 is wrong in denying such a priesthood 
to the Germans: Tacitus,> who was possessed of better information, records it, 
and that it developed in the period between the two writers is at the least not 
probable. The existence of an Aryan priesthood is of course certain from the 


1 Hirt, Die Indogermanen, pp. 518 ff. ; Zoroastrianism, pp. 88, 116) denies 
Feist, Kultur der Indogermanen, pp. the Iranians a sacerdotal class, but his 
353 ff. theory of the non-Iranian Magi cannot 

* Kretschmer, Gesch. d. Griech. Sprache, be accepted; Keith, JRAS. 1915, 
p- 128; Feist, op. cit., pp. 348, 572; pp- 790 ff. 
contrast Carnoy, Les Indo-Eurepéens, * Bell. Gall. vi. 21. Among the Slavs only 
p- 236, who prefers kinship to Scandi- those of the Elbe developed a priesthood, 
navian brag; cf. Osthoff, BB. xxiv. 113. Machal, Myth. of All Races, iii. 305. 


3 See MacCulloch, Religion of the Ancient *° Germania, 7, 10, 11, 40, 43. Cf. Helm, 
Celts, pp. 293 ff.; Moulton (arly Aligerm. Rel. i. 289-91. 


40 The Sources [Part ¥ 


close coincidence of Indian and Iranian names. But the evidence is clearly 
insufficient to decide anything for the state of the earliest Indo-European 
religion. 

The question of the primitive sacrifice is clearly insoluble, since among 
certain similarities there are great differences of view. The facts that victims 
were usually chosen from among edible animals, that other offerings were 
normally motived by some special end, as in the case of the horse sacrifice, 
that in choosing the victims efforts were made to assimilate the animal in sex, 
colour, and other characteristics to the deity, are common to most of the Indo- 
European peoples, but they are shared with many other peoples as well. 
Human sacrifices are recorded all over the world, and in some form or other 
among nearly all Indo-European peoples, but many different elements may 
have entered into these sacrifices, and any ascription of this form of religion 
to the early period must be purely conjectural. Offerings of cereals were 
doubtless made, as they are made by most peoples, but prognostication though 
widely attested in Europe—partly with clear indications of derivation from 
Babylon 1—is much less marked in Indian religion, and its separate develop- 
ment in the different nations is possible, although prognostication from the 
flight of birds has a strong claim to be considered Indo-European. 

The same negative result is obtained when the question of the employment 
of magic and the more humble beliefs of the people are concerned. All the 
Indo-European races practised magic, and curiously enough the Lithuanian 
and Old Slavonic preserve words precisely equivalent to the use of krtyd in 
India for magic : the formulae of some of the spells used have been traced in 
almost identic form in more than one language,” but these things are wide- 
spread and close parallels for magic rites can be found in the most distant 
parts of the earth. Similarly stories of the swan maidens and their mortal 
lovers occur in one form or another in all the Indo-European mythologies, 
but there is nothing distinctive about such tales. It is not in the slightest 
degree doubtful that the lesser mythology was strongly represented among the 
earliest peoples. The same consideration applies to the demonology : these 
obscure and but slightly individualized figures naturally leave no proof of their 
primitive identity. Nor in any strict sense can identity be postulated in such 
cases. These mythological figures have no history like the greater gods : they 
are in a sense ever new creations, and in no real way are they traditional. 

There is one further point of some interest. As we may have seen, the 
numbers of the gods as thirty-three are Indian and Iranian, but there is no 
similar grouping in any other of the religions, and the 12 of Greece which is 
not Homeric is only copied by Rome.? On the other hand, in connexion both 
with groups of gods and with attributes of deities and cult actions the number 


1 Meyer, Gesch. des Alt. I. ii. pp. 587, 588. schneider, ZDMG. Ivii. 474 ff. 
* Kuhn, KZ. xiii. 49 ff., 113 ff. For the * Wissowa, Rel. und Kultus der Rémer*, 
numbers 70 and 73 found in India pp. 61 ff. 


see Mahomedan parallels in Stein- 


Chap. 4] Comparative Mythology and Religion 4] 
3 with its multiple 9 are found not rarely in all the religions. In those of 
Europe the number 7 is rarely of specially sacred character until after the 
influence of the Christian religion had begun to be felt, or at least until the 
Jewish week had become familiar in the western world. On the other hand 
the number 7 is very often found in the Rigveda, and must be considered as 
distinctly a typical sacred number. It has been often suggested that this fact 
points to Semitic and specifically Babylonian influence,” but it must be noted 
that the week of seven days is not clearly proved for Babylonia,’ and there is 
therefore no obvious reason why the number should be denied as original in 
India. 

In addition to the material presented by other religions of peoples of 
kindred speech and origin to the Indo-European element in the Indian people, 
there is available for consideration in dealing with the phenomena of Indian 
religion the vast mass of information as to religions of the different peoples, 
civilized and uncivilized, of the earth which has been brought to light by 
modern research. The use of this material, however, presents great difficulties, 
and opens the way to serious misunderstanding, unless it is remembered that 
the mere similarity of practice may often be due to very different causes, 
and that an explanation which may be perfectly reasonable, when viewed with 
regard to the other phenomena of a religion as a whole, may be wholly out of 
place when applied to a different religious system. It follows, therefore, 
that any explanation of a religious rite which is out of harmony with the 
general aspect of Vedic religion is ipso facto open to grave doubt, and that an 
explanation in itself less plausible may deserve preference, simply because it 
is consonant with the general tendency of Vedic religious thought. Moreover, 
it is precisely in the deepest beliefs of the people and in their original concep- 
tions of religion that uniformity must be least expected: in the minor 
mythology there is much in all probability in common in every religion, but 
on the fundamental question of the nature of the great deities, their relations 


1 Warde Fowler, Religious Experience of the 
Roman People, pp. 98, 328, 441; 
A. Kaegi, Die Neunzahl bei den 
Ostariern (1891); Usener, RM. Iviii. 
1ff., 161ff., 321 ff.; Diels, Sibylli- 


alte Testament?, p. 592; Jastrow, AJT. 
ii. 812-52 ; E. Schiirer, ZfNTW. 1905, 
pp. 1-71; Reinach, Cultes, ii. 443-6 ; 
Hehn, Siebenzahl und Sabbat (Leipziger 
Semit. Studien, ii), but see Meyer, 


nische Blitter, pp. 40 ff.; G. Hiising, 
Die iranische Uberlieferung und das 
arische System (1909). 


* There is there, but only in the first 


millennium B.c., a group of 7 gods 
corresponding to the 7 planets: below, 
Part II, Chap. 8, § 2. 


3 The nearest approach to it is the fact 


that in certain months the 7th, 14th, 
2ist, and 28th were days of penance 
and sacred duties, perhaps based on 
a fourfold division of a lunar month ; 
Zimmer, Die Keilinschriften und das 


Gesch. des Alt} I. ii. pp. 587, 588, who 
much more plausibly holds that the 
sacredness of seven is due to its own 
character; von Schroeder (Arische 
Religion, i. 426-9), following F. v. 
Andrian (Mittetil. der Anthropol. Geseli- 
schaftin Wien, xxxi. 225-74), holds that 
in the Aryan period a set of nine gods 
was, under Babylonian influence, re- 
duced to seven. On the Celtic nine- 
night week, see Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, 
pp. 360 ff. See also Giintert, Der arische 
Weltkénig, pp. 178 ff. 


42 The Sources [Part I 


to their worshippers, and the form of sacrifice, there are clearly great distances 
between peoples, which should be recognized, not removed by efforts to trace 
to a common source things which are in essence different. It is undoubtedly 
the greatest defect of modern theories of religion that they seek a greater 
unity than it is possible to find and ignore fundamental discrepancies of 
mental organization. 

Moreover one serious charge must be brought against many of the theorists, 
and a charge which applies equally to Mannhardt, Sir J. Fraser, Ridgeway, 
Durkheim, and S. Reinach. These scholars assume that in the religious views 
of primitive savages are to be found the beginnings of religious belief, and that 
from their views must be reconstructed a scheme for the development of every 
form of religion. The fundamental absurdity of this view is the belief that 
savages of the nineteenth century are primitive man: it is logically wholly 
impossible to deny that the defects of the religions of these races may be 
precisely the cause why they have failed to develop and have remained in 
a savage state. Doubtless to prove this view is impossible, though many of 
the practices of savages are obviously open to serious disadvantages economic 
and social; but to disprove it is still more difficult, and, in view of this fact, 
to set up schemes of the development of religion based on the practices of 
the Australian aborigines is logically inexcusable, apart altogether from the 
fact that our knowledge of these customs is derived from students of ethnology, 
who observe peoples with whom they have no tie of blood or language and 
whose confidence they find as hard to win as their beliefs to understand. The 
mere controversy which has raged over the fact whether the Australian tribes 
or the Zulus have the conception of a supreme benevolent deity 1 is a striking 
proof of the almost hopeless difficulties attending the path of those who seek 
to attain real understanding of the aboriginal mind. 


§ 3. The Origin of Religion 

A further error engendered by the belief in the uniformity of religious 
development is the theory that it is possible on empirical grounds to determine 
the origin of religion. The mistake is again a logical one : the origin of religion 
is a question of philosophy,? and a fundamental one, the solution of which is 
far from probable. The hopelessness of any decision on empiric grounds may 
be seen from the diametrically opposite results which can be attained by 
arguing from the same facts. One theory, that of animism in one of its aspects,® 
1 Lang, Magic and Religion, pp. 8 ff., 224 ff. 


? Cf. Dieterich, Mutter Erde, p. 4. 
* Animism is often used merely as equiva- 


animism and manism, perhaps better 
spiritism. On this view naturalism 
(animatism) denotes the recognition of 


lent to the recognition of living powers 
in nature; for this sense some adopt 
animatism, reserving animism for 
specific connexion with the worship of 
the dead and beliefs therein derived ; 
others distinguish naturalism from both 


external phenomena as identical with 
the powers revered, animism holds that 
objects are ensouled, and manism 
(spiritism) holds that they are en- 
souled by spirits of the dead. Animism 
in the second of these senses is accepted 


Chap. 4] The Origin of Religion 43 
as expounded by Herbert Spencer, which was perhaps most interestingly 
developed by Hugo Elard Meyer, and which in recent times has found 
a most determined supporter in Prof. Ridgeway and S. Eitrem,! holds that 
all religion originates in the honour and respect shown to the spirits of the 
dead: from this belief and respect for these spirits is easily derived the view 
that there are potent spirits in natural phenomena, whence develops nature 
worship. It is, on the other hand, asserted with equal insistence that, while 
no doubt honour is paid to the spirits of the dead and this source has been a 
fruitful one in the development of religion, none the less religion is more than 
that and springs from a direct recognition in nature of powers akin to but 
superior to those of men.” Such a view can arise prior to any clear discrimina- 
tion of spirit and body : that view is later in development and more reflective : 
prior perhaps to animism, and in any case independent of it, there is in fact 
a stage preanimistic or animatistic or naturalistic, when man conceives of 
natural objects as living powers, not as objects filled with souls ab extra? 
Logically * the second view appears in itself the more plausible, but it is 
obvious that the reconstruction is purely hypothetical, and admits of no 
proof. We do not know of any religion existing at any time of which we could 
certainly and convincingly affirm that an idea of the deity had been framed 
when a knowledge of the difference between body and spirit was not known,? 
and Dr. Marett’s own treatment ° of religion as including the whole field of the 
supernormal is so vague as to be of no positive value, a criticism equally 
applicable to Mr. Clodd’s’? conception of power, or rather many powers, as the 
basis of nature and spirit worship alike. 

It is clearly erroneous to ascribe to primitive religion the conception of 
mana as something universal of which part is possessed by the objects of his 
worship. Rather matter is sentient and has mentality, the whole forming 
a unity, not a spirit abiding in something not spiritual, and each object has 
a specific power of its own. In this as in other cases progress must be from 
the concrete and individual to the formulation of the universal, from individual 


for Egyptian religion by W. Max Ridgeway’s ‘criticism (Dramas and 


Miller, Egypt. Mythology, pp. 10, 15 ff. 
In the view adopted in this work 
animatism and spiritism are accepted 
as sources of religion, animism is 
regarded as a secondary development. 
The wider use of animism to denote 
indwelling power is defended by 
Alexander, Myth. of All Races, x. 269. 


Dramatic Dances, pp. 47 ff.) is in part 
merely captious and irrelevant. Feist 
(Kultur der Indogermanen, pp. 322, 334, 
344) still seems to hold Tylor’s view 
that the process is from regarding a 
spirit as animating a tree to the 
worship of the tree (e. g.) per se and 
so with the sun. This is clearly open to 


Opferritus und Voropfer der Griechen und grave objection. 
Romer (1915); cf. Keith, JHS. xxxvi. ‘ Cf. Keith, JRAS. 1916, pp. 335, 336. 
107 ff. > Cf. Marett, Threshold of Religion, p. x. 
7 


to 


Cf. Lang, Modern Mythology, pp. xiff.;  ° Op. cit., pp. 188 ff. 
Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Trans. Third Int. Cong. Hist. Rel. i. 33-5. 


Tylor, p.10; Helm, Altgerm. Rel.i.13 ff.; 
Hopkins, Origin of Religion, chap. i. 
Marett, Threshold of Religion, pp. 1-382 ; 


Cf. the neo-vitalist theory of R. 
Dussaud, Introduction a Vhistoire des 
religions (1914). 


44. The Sources [Part I 


powers to the belief in one power, mana, manitou, brahman, or whatever other 
name it bears, through sharing in which the individual objects possess their 
force.} 

From these sources, naturalism and spiritism, it is easy to imagine the 
development of the spirits or demons whom Wundt ? classifies in five groups. 
Thus we have ghosts or spooks, which have no connexion with any special 
object, and which, therefore, have a close resemblance to the spirits of the dead ; 
not unlike in character, though of quite different origin, are those which 
express the tricky or sometimes terrifying aspects of nature, abiding in the 
house, the air, the waters, the forest or the waste, elves or cobolds, dwarfs or 
giants. There are also vegetation spirits, the simplest being those animating 
the individual tree or plant, while in more complex cases we have spirits 
of the wood or the corn field or more vaguely of the life of vegetation as a 
whole ;. sometimes these spirits may be derived from souls of the dead, as 
the spirit which ensouls the plant growing from the grave of the dead, but 
more often they are nature spirits proper. Further there are spirits of heaven, 
of the air, the clouds, the waters, and the earth, the external vegetation 
demons of Wundt,? who emphasises by this name their relation to the growth 
of the crops. Akin to spirits of vegetation regarded as a whole, we have 
spirits entrusted with the care of whole fields of activity ; spirits of the hunt, 
of seafaring, housebuilding, commerce and industry, war, marriage, govern- 
ment and law. Lastly there is the vast group of spirits of disease and madness, 
whose origin may be traced in part to spirits of nature and in part to the souls 
of the dead, and even more often to the creative imagination which extends 
indefinitely the number of such spirits. 

With external vegetation demons in Wundt’s sense and the spirits which 
preside over departments of activity, we attain something approaching gods, 
and, bearing in mind the fact that the souls of the dead are not fettered by 
connexion with any definite aspect of nature, it is possible to believe that the 
idea of a god not merely as superhuman but also as supermundane could 
develop itself easily. A definite theory of this process is evolved by Usener,* 
who postulates as the first stage momentary gods (Augensblickgétter), spirits 
which preside over any specific activity in the moment it takes place, and 
which, therefore, are real only for that moment and for him who then invokes 
their aid. The next stage is when, in lieu of these momentary deities, man 


* Van Gennep (L’état actuel du probleme though it is primarily not philosophic, 


totémique, pp. 47 f., 86 ff., 821) defends 
the universal aspect of mana as primi- 
tive, but, though his view is valid as 
against Ridgeway’s effort (Dramas and 
Dramatic Dances, pp. 885 f.) to show 
that mana is later than spirit worship, 
it does not meet the obvious objection 
that so wide a conception cannot be 
treated as primitive. The conception 
is the basis of Indian philosophy, 


but popular, as among the North 
American Indians ; Alexander, Myth. of 
All Races, x. 269. 


* Volkerpsychologie, IV. i. 457 ff.; Helm, 


Altgerm. Rel. i. 30 ff. 


3 Ibid. 515 ff. 
* Griechische Gétternamen, pp. 75 ff., 279 ff. 


Cf. Carnoy, Les Indo-Européens, pp. 
216-18. 


Chap, 4] The Origin of Religion 45 


advances to the conception of a single deity presiding over all similar activities, 
a Sondergott of sowing in general, for instance; deities of this kind are 
asserted to exist in Greek, Roman, and Lithuanian religion. The final 
step to give a god personality and permit him to be developed thus in myth, 
cult, poetry, and art is furnished by language; if the progress of phonetic 
change, or the disuse of a root in ordinary speech, leaves the proper appella- 
tion of the Sondergott isolated and no longer readily intelligible, then he can 
easily assume a wider character than can ever be his as long as his name 
betrays his real nature. So in India Dyaus never developed a real personality 
comparable to Zeus or Jupiter, because the word remained in living use to 
denote the sky in India, while it died out in Greek and Latin ; hence also the 
reason why the names of gods are so often difficult to interpret etymologically. 

Usener’s views are not wholly convincing ; his momentary gods ! are not 
established by any historical evidence of value, and can only be regarded as a 
possible, but not necessary, stage of imagination. His Sondergétter are more 
real, and some gods of this type may be traced in Vedic religion.? But he 
certainly much exaggerated the value of his evidence which has been severely 
criticized for Greek, Roman, and Lithuanian religion by Farnell,? Wissowa,* 
and Warde Fowler® among others. It is in fact plain that the elaboration of 
the Sondergétter often represents the priestly working up of simpler ideas, 
and that they are later developments of naturalism under the influence of 
animism, and not really primitive. Nor can the argument from names be 
treated as of decisive importance; in fact the disuse of a word may often 
rather be because it had become a divine name and, therefore, was too 
sacred for indiscriminate ordinary use. Allowance in the development of 
personality must be made for several other factors, the cult certainly in high 
measure. Wundt ® again insists on the importance of the hero as suggesting the 
development of the personal god, though he clearly exaggerates the impor- 
tance of this factor. The practice of making images of the deity, which is in 
part an outcome of personification, at the same time must have aided in the 
development of that feature. Importance also must be attached to the 
influence of ethical considerations, though precisely how these operated is by 
no means easy to decide. 

While many authorities are content to hold that in the interworking of 
these two forces, nature- and spirit-worship, there may be found the explana- 
tion of the origin of religion, others, conspicuous among whom is von 
Schroeder,’ urge that a further source is essential, and that its existence is 
supported by an impartial examination of the account of observers of the 


‘ Cf. Wundt, op. cit. IV. i. 560 f. pp. 158ff. For an attempt, not 
* Below, Part II, Chap. 11, § 3. specially successful, to resuscitate the 
* Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. view of Sondergétter, see Rose, JRS. 
Tylor, pp. 81 ff.; Greek Hero Cults, iii. 233-41. 
pp. 78 ff. 6 Op. cit. IIL. iii. 420 ff. 
* Gesam. Abhand., pp. 306 ff. 7 Arische Religion, i. 81 ff., 106 ff., 139 ff. 


© Religious Experience of the Roman People, See also below, p. 51. 


46 The Sources [Part I 


religions of primitive tribes. This source is the belief in a highest being whose 
nature is goodness ; the Australian tribes, the Andaman islanders, the savages 
of the Tierra del Fuego, among others, are held to believe in such a being, 
whose commands are the moral principles which they obey. In other cases 
this belief has become faint and blurred, but it reveals itself in the ordeal 
which is an appeal to the decision of such a power. In some cases the belief in 
this deity pictures him as creator of the world and of men. Religion involves 
essentially the recognition of the existence of such a being, of man’s depen- 
dence on him, and the desire to enter into relations with him. The conception 
is obviously not primitive ; it is due to reflection by man on the fact of the 
self-sacrificing instinct which is seen among animals in the love for offspring 
and which manifests itself in an increasing number of ways with the advance 
of man. The existence of this impulse can be explained by man only on the 
theory that there must be one whose will it is that men should so act, a view 
which easily is added to by the conception of that one as the creator. When, 
whether after a long period or possibly comparatively early through the effert 
of a specially gifted intellect, this idea came into being, it may be said that 
man was truly born as man, religion truly came into being and with it morality. 
Inevitably, of course, this conception blends with the other two sources of 
religion ; thus in India Rudra, in von Schroeder’s view a spirit in origin, 
assumes both the features of a god of nature and of the high god; similarly 
Visnu, a god of nature, assumes the characteristics of the high god and of a 
spirit. 

Von Schroeder strengthens his case by his care not to attempt to claim 
for his source of religion as great antiquity as for the others, and it is clear 
that he emphasizes an extremely important element in religion, its connexion 
with ethical principles. Apart from questions of origins, it is plain that by 
the Indo-Iranian period, and very probably even in the Indo-European period, 
this element had come effectively into operation as powerfully affecting the 
nature of the gods, so that it is a question of minor importance, for practical 
purposes, whether we assume this belief as a third source of religion or hold 
that ethical motives have been introduced ab evtra into a religious scheme 
which came into life independent of ethics. What is clear is that many of the 
gods have no original ethical character, and fear often seems to have been more 
prominent than love or friendship as regards the spirits of the dead. 

An instance of generalization on insufficient grounds is afforded by 
S. Reinach’s ! theory of totemism : he insists that the traces of the reverence 
paid to animals is always to be accounted for in one simple way: at one 
time the animal was the god: men revered animals by an excess of philan- 


+ Cultes, Mythes et Religions, i. 47 ff. On Reuterskiéld, Archiv fiir Rel. xv. 1-23 ; 
totemism see A. van Gennep, L’état Goldenweiser, Journ. of Am. Folklore, 
actuel du probleme totémique (1920) ; 1910, pp. 179 ff.; Wundt, op. cit. 
Hopkins, °JAOS. xxxviii. 145-58 ; IV.1i. 327 ff. 


Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy (1910) ; 


Chap. 4] The Origin of Religion 47 


thropy, by a hypertrophy of the same instinct which made human society 
a possibility : but at stated intervals the animal god was devoured in order to 
renew the tie of blood between the clan and the animal, which was then 
replaced by another specimen of the species, the god being the species, not the 
mere individual. To this feeling of man for the animal he attributes the 
domestication of wild animals and the greatest possible help to the progress of 
civilization. In later times, as the process of religious development proceeded, 
the animal gods faded away and appeared as animals in the train of anthropo- 
morphic deities, or enemies of these deities. There is some obscurity in the 
conception of the mode of the introduction of anthropomorphism, which in 
Greece ! at least Reinach seems to regard as a new element introduced from 
without the original religion, but the real objection to the theory is that it 
ignores many other possibilities explaining reverence paid to animals. The 
hunter who pays a semblance of reverence to the animal which he has killed 
does so often to avoid the anger of the spirit of the dead beast, and the revenge 
of the relatives of the slain, and no sacramental relation is involved. Again 
there is an essential distinction to be drawn between theriomorphism and 
actual worship of animals for themselves. The early religious imagination, it 
is clear, was not capable of the distinctions between human and animal which 
we draw so sharply: the innumerable legends of the transmutation of men 
into animals and vice versa show a certain instability of view, and a god like 
Indra or like Dionysos may be conceived as bull shaped, as well as in human 
or mixed form. Closely allied with this thought is the conception that the god 
may take actual embodiment in the form of the animal, more especially when 
the animal is led up to be offered to him in sacrifice : the classical example of 
the Bouphonia,? the flight of the priest, and the condemnation of the weapon 
with which the fatal blow is given to the ox can thus best be explained. For 
the time being, and in a certain sense, the victim may be said to become a fetish, 
and like a fetish it is an object filled with the holy power, but not abidingly, 
and, what is more important, not in and for itself sacred. There is at least as 
little difficulty in understanding this aspect of religious belief as in accepting 
the theory that totemism is a universal stage of religious faith. 

A like one-sidedness mars the theories of Mannhardt and of Sir J. Frazer 
regarding the nature of sacrifice, which the latter in the most clear terms 
reduces to a magic device to prolong the life of the crops, men, and animals. 
From this position Sir J. Frazer ? has advanced to the definite assertion that 


1 So for Egypt, Wiedemann, Der Tierkult magic, nevertheless appears to believe 
der alien Aegypter (1912). that magic precedes religion in order of 

* Frazer, Spirits of the Corn, ii. 4-7; time (Religious Experience of the Roman 
Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, People, pp. 47-9, 188, 223, 224). See 
i. 88 ff.; cf., however, Stengel, Opfer- also N. N. Law, Ancient Indian Polity, 
brauche der Griechen, pp. 203-21; chap. ix. For a criticism of Wundt’s 
van Gennep, op. cit., pp. 307 ff. belief in the original magic character of 

®’ The Golden Bough’ (1911-15). See Keith, the sacrifice (op. cit. IV. i. 423 ff.) see 
JHS. xxxv. 281-4. Warde Fowler, who R. M. Meyer, Altgerm. Rel., p. 408. 


insists on the distinction of religion and 


48 The Sources [Part I 


all religion is derived from magic: that in the first instance the primitive 
savage conceives of himself as all powerful over the course of nature, and that 
he wields the means of magic to bring about the results he desires, but that 
in the long run, finding that his magic arts do not prevail to accomplish all his 
desires, he has instead recourse to the belief in unseen beings in whom abide 
the powers which he is denied, and of which he confesses himself barren, and 
seeks to win the favour of these beings by offerings and prayer, though con- 
tinuing of course at the same time the practice of his old magic devices. 
Apart from objections to the attempt to reduce sacrifice to one primitive 
type alone, and to prove that the gift theory of sacrifice is late, the theory of 
the priority of magic rests upon the fundamental assumption that primitive 
man believes in his power to control by his arts the whole proceedings of the 
universe. It is difficult to conceive how such an idéa can be deemed primitive, 
or how it could have developed in the mind of primitive man, whose experience 
from the first must have sternly checked any such high belief in the powers of 
mortal efforts. Magic and religion are to all appearance in essence distinct and 
irreconcilable things, as different in essence as science and religion as a 
philosophy, and the fact that they are inextricably conjoined in practically 
every religious system known to us does not in the slightest degree prove their 
identity, or render probable the derivation of one from the other. 

Yet another view of the same false generalization is that of O. Gruppe, 
which would make the whole of the theology of religion later than the cult 
and derive all myth from cult : thus in India the fire and Soma ritual would be 
the starting-point for the Vedic mythology, an idea which receives some 
support from the views of Bergaigne. The theory hardly admits of serious 
discussion when stated as a general rule. There are indeed, especially in 
Greek religion, not a few cases where the cult, for instance that of Dionysos, 
has begotten myths such as the death of Pentheus,? and the same principle 
may certainly be allowed to be applicable in India, but to go further than that 
is to leave all proof and probability behind.? The myths of the Rigveda in 
particular are usually simple and direct enough, and reflect too clearly the 
actual phenomena of nature to allow us to imagine that they have any other 
origin than the expression by man of the ideas which naturally occur to him 
from the observation of such things as the daily movement of the sun or the 
bursting of the monsoon with all that it means for Indian life. To the 
worship of the gods the cult stands of course in the closest relation, but 
normally it takes in India the form of prayer or sacrifice in order to win the 
favour of the god: only when we leave worship proper and come to magic 
do we as a rule find a mimicry of the mythic action of the deity. 


1 Griech. Myth., pp. 547 ff. rare in Greece and Rome are excluded 
* Bather, JHS. xiv. 244 ff. Cf. Rohde, in Vedic religion by its aniconic 
Psyche’, i. 137 ff. on the Hyakinthos character. 
myth. ‘ Helm, Aligerm. Rel. i. 56f. See also 
* Myths created by misunderstandings of Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion (1906); 


pictorial representations which are not Fox, Greek and Roman Myth., pp. xliv ff. 


Chap. 4] The Origin of Religion 49 

Another aspect of the same view is to be seen in the theory of totemism 
presented by Durkheim,! who lays stress on the part played in religion by the 
tribal consciousness, and sees in the god the creation of that consciousness as 
a hypostasis of itself, the object chosen to render the conception present 
to the senses being often, but not necessarily always, an animal. He declares 
that animism or animatism cannot explain religion, but it is wholly impossible 
to concede to his arguments against either theory conclusive weight, while his 
own expression for the fundamental character of religion is obviously wholly 
incapable of proof, being purely a psychological theory, which has no strong 
support other than the postulate, which he never attempts to prove, that the 
mind of the Australian aborigine is the mind of a really primitive man.2, He 
rejects the theories of totemism adduced by other scholars such as Tylor, 
Hill Tout, and Andrew Lang, but in no case are his own arguments convincing 
or even in the main plausible, nor can it be said that any real explanation of 
totemism is to be derived from them. 

Yet another view of religion is that taken by Gilbert Murray,’ who finds 
the first deity in the medicine man himself, a theory which obviously stands in 
very sharp contrast, though apparently its author does not recognize the 
fact, with the view of Durkheim. The medicine man with his control over the 
fertility of the earth and his other superhuman powers is held gradually to 
abandon his claims to deity, and to invent other gods whose agent and 
spokesman he is. But if the earliest deity is human there is an easy road for 
theriomorphic conceptions to creep in: men are prone to devour animals for 
the sake of securing their power or cunning or some other quality, and in some 
undefined way this passes into the belief in theriomorphic and even animal 
gods: the dance of the tribesmen wearing the skin of the animal slain 
developes the goat-formed deity and so on.* These speculations are acute and 
ingenious, but serious discussion they can hardly demand. The growth of a 
god from a magician, or from a rite, as the origin of religion, is a wholly 
superficial and unnatural conception: vegetation ritual cannot be said to 
create the conception of the dying and reviving god: the ritual rests on the 
conception of the death of the god and is inconceivable without the belief 
in a vegetation spirit, a conception for which Murray with Miss Harrison would 
substitute the monstrosity of an Eniautos Daimon, a view which yields the 


Four Stages of Greek Religion, pp. 39 ff. 
Cf. J. E. Harrison, Epilegomena to the Contrast P. Ehrenreich, Zetétschrift fiir 
Study of Greek Religion (1921), chap. i. Ethnologie, xxxviii. 536 ff. 

2 For a very different view of Australian ‘ The ‘ projection’ theory of religion is 


1 Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1915). 


beliefs as the result of race mixture see 
Rivers, Essays and Studies presented to 
W. Ridgeway, pp. 480 ff., and see van 
Gennep, L’état actuel du probléme toté- 
mique, pp. 40 ff. Cf. Dixon, Myth. of All 
Races, ix. pp. xiii f. 


* Anthropology and the Classics, pp. 74 ff. ; 


4 [u.0.s. 31] 


carried to its logical conclusions in a 
most amusing, because serious, work 
by Miss J. Harrison, Themis (1912). 
The author has a personal animus 
against the Olympians as non-matriar- 
chal, and now interprets religion in 
terms of sociological epistemology. 


50 The Sources [Part I 


logical result that Here is found to be a old year spirit, her name being 
equated with the word ‘ year.’ } 

Certainly no more satisfactory is the belief that gods are sprung from kings 
or other famous and distinguished men, apart from any connexion with 
magic. This doctrine has always been a favourite one in connexion with 
Indian religion, a theory based on hasty generalizations from observation of 
modern instances, masquerading under the semblance of an unprejudiced 
study of Indian nature. The absurdity of interpreting Vedic religion of the 
period 1400 to 1000 B.c. by the light of investigation of the modern Hindu, 
separated by great differences in blood and tradition, would seem self-evident, 
and it is to be regretted that we have serious suggestions * made to prove the 
historical character of Indra as a great king, and even to localize his exploits, 
and not even the suggestion of primitive Euhemerists of India excuses the 
attempt® to discover two ancient kings in the Aevins, a view which is ludicrous 
in face of the widespread recognition of similar dual divinities, a fact which 
shows that their worship, whatever its exact cause, cannot be put down to the 
suppositious existence of two specially distinguished princes. The theory 
wholly omits to explain why these persons should be described in terms of 
solar or storm mythology, or why in many parts of the earth savages are 
found worshipping natural phenomena so frankly as to render belief in the 
phenomena being really dead men ludicrous. It is somewhat unfortunate that 
we should have escaped from the theory of Herbert Spencer which makes the 
Vedic Dawn-Goddess the ‘ ghost of a former Miss Dawn’ into one which 
makes a warrior king out of so naturalistic a god as Indra, and which, if it is 
consistent, ought to find in Usas a degeneration from the worship of some dis- 
tinguished Vedic hetaira, seeing that her nature in the Rigveda suggests a 
distinct lack of Puritanism. On this issue the opinion of Hopkins ¢ is clear and 
fundamentally correct: ‘No one who reads the Rig-Veda impartially can 
question for a moment that Fire and Dawn and Wind were phenomenal gods 
from the beginning and a wider outlook only confirms this fact.’ 

An important practical result follows from the refusal to adopt as final and 
exclusive any of these theories of religion. It becomes impossible to adapt 
an order of exposition based on the different age of the religious phenomena 
presented, as for instance is done by Dr. Warde Fowler in his valuable 
exposition of Roman religion, in which he starts from survivals of the primi- 
tive magic, in which he sees the first expression of the relation of man to the 
mystery of the universe, and then proceeds to discuss the development of 
that attitude through the religion of the settled life of the agricultural family, 
and the faith of the city state, to its later development under Greek influence. 
Attractive as this method of procedure at first appears, it is perfectly clear 


' Leaf, Homer and History, p. 266 n. * Origin of Religion, pp. 51f. Cf. also 
* Konow, The Aryan Gods of the Mitani N. N. Law, Ancient Indian Polity, 
People (1921). pp. 112 ff. 


$ BSOS. III. i. 167 f. 


Chap. 4] The Mingling of Races and Cultures 51 


that it cannot be justified as a scientific mode of exposition. The difficulty 
appears clearly when the figure of Jupiter comes under discussion. It is 
impossible for Dr. Warde Fowler to question the fact that he is a great god, 
a sky god, and a god who was not developed by the Roman people indepen- 
dently : indeed Dr. Fowler shows some disposition ! to favour the view of 
Lang,” Jevons,® and others who accept the primitive belief of many peoples 
in one great god, which is anterior to polytheism, and which is often held to be 
the origin of Chinese religion.* But he never tries to connect this view with 
his other principle of the priority of magic to religion, nor to explain how the 
two ideas stand in relation to one another. It is, therefore, only possible in 
dealing with religion to indicate the diverse elements involved in it, and to 
trace the development of these several elements and their interaction and 
intermingling. To derive one element from the other is a task too difficult, 
too speculative, and ultimately too philosophical to be dealt with in the 
account of any individual faith, while to base on such theories the order of 
development of any individual religion is only misleading. 


$4. The Mingling of Races and Cultures 


Modern views of the religion of Indo-European peoples are strongly 
influenced by recognition of the fact that race mixture must be assumed to 
have been an important factor in the development of the religions of the 
historic peoples such as the Greeks and the Romans. The view that Greek 
religion is a real representative of a primitive Indo-European religion has been 
necessarily abandoned, when it is realized that the lands occupied by the 
Greeks were already the scene of a great and energetic civilization, which 
cannot be supposed to have left no trace in the beliefs of the invaders, apart 
altogether from the fact that the physical type of the invaders may have been 
seriously modified by the intermixture. Similarly, just as the religion of the 
Homeric poems has been treated as belonging to a small invading aristocracy, 
so the religion of Rome as revealed to us in the Calendar of Numa in its 
sanity and moderation has been held to be the work of invaders superimposing 
a higher faith on the lower form of belief which existed formerly, a view which 
Dr. Warde Fowler now inclines to favour,® urging in support the fact that we 
find a curious contrast between the orderly and decorous Parentalia as a 
festival of the dead in February and the Lemuria in May, which seems to have 
been a somewhat savage rite of the banning of ghosts. The latter he deems to 


1 Op. cit., p. 142. Schmidt, Der Ursprung der Gottesidee 

* Making of Religion, p. 206. Contrast (1912); above, p. 45. For North 
C. H. Toy, JAOS. xxiii. 29-37. America see Alexander, Myth. of All 

* Idea of God in Early Religions, p. 30. TRACES) Xe ZL ide 

* Ross, Original Religion of China, pp.128ff.;  ° Religious Experience of the Roman People, 
cf. ERE. v. 395 (Japan); Petrie, pp. viii, 393. For Greece, see Lang, 
Religion of Egypt, ch. i; Carnoy, Les The World of Homer (1910). Cf., for 
Indo-Européens, pp. 163 ff.; L. von the Celts, Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, 
Schroeder, VOJ. xix. 1ff.; P. W. pp. 105 f. 


4* 


52 The Sources [Part I 


have belonged to the primitive population, and to have been taken over by the 
framers of the Calendar of Numa in the desire to restrict the rite within due 
limits, and so to diminish the disorderly character of the more ancient belief 
which was too deeply rooted in the popular mind to be ignored entirely. 
Nor, of course, is there any doubt that mixture of religious beliefs has often 
taken place: recently a very ingenious theory 1 of the complication of early 
Australian religion has been put forward, based on the view that the religion 
of these people has been influenced by small bodies of invaders, who have 
visited the land from time to time but have failed to establish themselves 
or introduce in a lasting way a higher culture. 

But, while in principle the theory of the effect of race mixture as producing 
religious phenomena is perfectly valid, it is of the utmost difficulty to make 
effective use of it in any examination of an actual religion. Prof. Ridgeway 
has laid stress on the failure of students of Vedic religion to emphasize the dis- 
tinction between the faith of the invader as revealed in the Rigveda, and that 
of the aborigine as revealed in the Atharvaveda. A similar theory of the effect 
of the aboriginal population on the Aryan invaders has been in the develop- 
ment of the Sanskrit language: it has been urged that the development of 
Prakritic speeches is due entirely to the inability of the conquered population 
to reproduce precisely the speech of the invaders.?. The theory in both cases 
is tempting, but the logical difficulties of applying it effectively are very great. 
In the first place we have no standard of comparison by which we can dis- 
criminate between the higher and lower elements in religion : what appears to 
us to be higher is and must be determined by our conceptions of religion, and 
as conceptions of religion vary as much to-day as ever, it is impossible for us 
confidently to hold that one form was higher than another. If, in the second 
place, we take the religion of Homer and set it up as a standard of true Indo- 
European religion, we are obviously making a completely unproved assump- 
tion, and one which can be rendered doubtful by reference to the poems 
themselves, which here and there contain hints of the lower side of religion, 
and more primitive beliefs, which can only purely arbitrarily be assigned to 
the subject population. Further difficulties manifest themselves, when it is 
sought to find out what was the racial character of this subject population : 
in the case of Rome, Prof. Ridgeway sees the Ligures,? but Dr. Binder a Latin 
people,’ and the Latins cannot be denied the right to rank as Indo-Europeans. 
Similarly in the case of Greece: it is quite impossible to believe that the 
Achaeans were the first Indo-Europeans to enter Greece: the Ionians and 
many other tribes were doubtless there before them,° and there must therefore 
have been mixture of race and religion before the Achaeans. 

Difficulties are also presented by the theory of Prof. Murray which admits 
* Rivers, Essays and Studies presented to * Who were the Romans? (Proceedings of 

W. Ridgeway, p. 480. Cf. his History British Academy, 1908-9.) 
of Melanesian Society (1914), ii. 357 ff. APinerlilebs. 


2 Petersen, JAOS. xxxii. 414 ff. Cf. Keith, ° Kretschmer, Glotta,i. 9 ff. ; Farnell, Cults 
Cambridge Hist. of India, i. 109. of the Greek States, iv. 155 ff. 


Chap. 4] The Mingling of Races and Cultures 53 


that the Achaeans at one time were the possessors of an inferior form of re- 
ligion, so that there is no question of the introduction of a high type of Indo- 
European religion, but that, in the course of their journeys from the north to 
Greece, they had laid aside much of this primitive barbarism. But, once we 
admit that they at one time were addicted to this lower religion, it becomes 
very difficult to distinguish between the remnants of this former state which 
they brought with them, and the results of contact with the same primitive 
religion in an unchanged condition. The problem is rendered more easy for 
Prof. Murray in that he accepts the view that the Homeric poems were made 
refined and freed from the primitive beliefs which they at one time evinced by 
deliberate remodelling in the sixth century B.c. and subsequently, but this 
wild theory can hardly be taken seriously. 

Again, much reliance has been put on the mode of disposal of the dead as a 
sign of change of belief and of race. But, though it is often regarded as obvious 
that a change from burial to burning must accompany a new view of the dead, 
it is quite impossible to prove anything of the kind: neither the theory that 
changes of culture denote change of race, nor the view that change of culture 
has nothing to do with change of race, though both have distinguished expo- 
nents, has any real validity as a general proposition.! There is, however, much 
primitive evidence that burial and burning were means of disposing of the 
dead adopted by peoples without change of culture or recorded change of 
belief : thus the primitive neolithic tribes of Britain both buried and burned 
their dead, as did also the tribes of Tasmania, and the Romans in those periods 
of which we have records. Moreover it is probable that burial was always 
regarded as the normal and more primitive way: at least the fact that in the 
Rigveda burial seems to be contemplated as quite normal, and that in the 
later ritual, when burning was normal for all save sages and children under two 
years of age, it was considered proper to bury the bones left from the burning, 
stands in curious accord with the rule in Rome by which the burial of one bone 
was normal despite the burning of the body. The evidence in fact leaves the 
impression that it is quite impossible to treat burial and burning of the dead 
as marks of racial distinction : indeed it is not even possible to treat the two 
modes as indicating a different view of the position of the dead in every case : 
the Rigveda treats the two principles as one, and it has been argued that the 
same meaning must be seen even in Greek religion, where the distinction of 
burning and burial has been generally held to be fundamental as indicating 
change of race and religious belief alike.? 


1 Cf. Dieterich, Mutter Erde, p. 66. Helm (Arische Religion, i. 260). 
(Altgerm. Rel. i. 153 ff.) insists that in * Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and 
Germany the change, manifesting an Ancient Greek Religion, chaps. v and vi; 
increasing fear of the proximity of the Fowler, Religious Experience of the 
dead, is due to foreign influence ; he Roman People, pp. 400, 401; Keith, 
rejects Babylon as the ultimate source JRAS. 1912, pp. 470-4 ; Meyer, Gesch. 
(with Ed. Meyer, Zeitschrift fiir Ethnol., des Alt. I. ii. pp. 827, 863, 864, 893 ; 


1905, p. 296) against von Schroeder Hopkins, Origin of Religion, pp. 148 ff. 


54 The Sources [Part I 


In the case of India we have further to face, as in that of Greece, but even 
more markedly, the absence of an early information as to the religion of the 
non-Aryan tribes. It is, of course, true that we may observe, and use observa- 
tions earlier recorded of, the usages of the primitive tribes of India, but it 
would be absurd to claim that these represent the state attained by the non- 
Aryans ! at the moment and the places where the Aryans came into contact 
with them. The material remains antedating the Hellenic invasions of Greece 
which shed a scanty light, pending the interpretation of the accompanying 
records, on pre-Hellenic religion are wanting in India, and the literary evidence 
of Dravidian religion comes far too late to enable us to state precisely what 
that religion was before the Aryans imprinted indelibly their influence on all 
higher religion in India. Whatever amount of Dravidian influence is to be 
traced on the religion of the Vedic texts,? it is certain that the epic already 
cannot be regarded as representing pure Aryan religion, and that indeed 
Dravidian influence may have been of great importance. By the epic period 
also we must make allowance, however, vaguely and uncertainly for the 
religious influences introduced by the hordes of invaders, Greek, Parthian, and 
Caka from the north-west and still more perhaps for the contact of cultures, 
while in the Vedic period we are confronted with problems of Babylonian 
influence exercised either directly on India or on the Indo-Iranians, the 
possibilities of which have been largely increased by the discovery of Aryan 
deities in the records of the Mitanni. 

The difficulty of decision as pre-Aryan or to foreign influences in any con- 
crete case are admirably illustrated by the controversy as to the development 
of the Upanisad philosophy which has variously been claimed as the finest 
expression of the true Aryan spirit, and as fundamentally non-Aryan and in 
essence Dravidian.? The controversy cannot be decided by any form of 
argument, for the simple reason that we have no external evidence of the true 
Aryan spirit, on the one hand, nor of the Dravidian prior to the date of the 
early Upanisads. Similarly we do not and cannot know definitely whether the 
use of idols was gradually introduced into Indian religion by borrowing from 
the Dravidians, or whether the ideas of asceticism, of caste, of transmigration 
came from them, or in what degree, for instance, Rudra was a Dravidian god. 
On these subjects speculation is possible, but it is necessary to recognize that 


2 Presumably a Dravidian or Munda this means: at any rate fear is ap- 


speech. If they were totemists, which 
is uncertain (it is denied for the Todas 
by W. H. R. Rivers (The Todas, pp. 
140 ff.) and for the Nagas by T. C. Hod- 
son, The Naga Tribes of Manipur, 
pp. 70 ff.), then they certainly did not 
seriously effect the Indo-Aryans in 
this regard. 


parently a dominant motive in modern 
India; Martin, The Gods of India, 
pp. 282 ff. Arbman (Rudra, p. 140) 
assumes, without proof, that we are to 
find very primitive ideas in Vedic 
religion, forgetting how far from 
primitive the Aryans were. 


* Cf. G. W. Brown, Studies in honor of 
2 Possibly the motive of fear as that of Bloomfield, pp. 75 ff. 


worship was made more prominent by 


Chap. 4] Popular and Hieratic Religion 55 


beyond speculation in the great majority of cases we cannot possibly proceed, 
and the same remark applies to most of the efforts to trace Babylonian in- 
fluences on Indian religion. 


§ 5. Popular and Hieratic Religion 


Nothing is more difficult than to determine in what measure the Vedic | 
religion of the texts was really popular, and how far it merely represented the | 
views of the priests. It would, of course, be folly to depreciate the value of | 
knowledge of the latter, for it is to those only who deeply busy themselves 
with religion that, for good or bad, changes in popular views are ultimately 
due, and there is no valid reason to suppose that in the main the gulf between 
the religion of the Vedic priest and the Aryan people was greater than that 
between modern Churchmen and the ordinary citizen of the lower social orders. 

It is doubtless tempting! to draw the lines between priests and populace 
as widely as possible, and to regard the Vedic priests as excogitating rituals 
with little regard for popular views, converting popular rites to suit themselves 
as far as practicable, and leaving others unnoticed or barely mentioned. For 
this view there is, of course, some justification ; in the details of the great 
Crauta sacrifice and in the conception of the piling of the fire altar, as expressed 
at least in the Catapatha Brahmana, we find priestly elaboration and priestly 
thought. But on the other hand investigation shows us essentially popular 
rites in much of the Vedic sacrifice, embellished by the priests but real and 
living; the Rajasttya, the Vajapeya, the Mahavrata, are no mystic rites but 
homely ceremonies, largely magical in character and easily comprehensible by 
the participators.” 

The danger of seeking to minimize the connexion between priests and 
people is seen in the suggestion that the gods of the domestic ritual, who are in 
large measure those of the Crauta sacrifices, are figures imposed by the priests 
on popular usage, for it leads to the doctrine that Brahman had not the slightest 
popular hold, a suggestion irreconcilable with the prominence given to that 
deity in the Buddhist scriptures. Similarly an artificial origin is attributed to 
the nature spirits and abstract hypostases which appear very freely in the 
domestic ritual. Yet comparative religion suggests at once that these are far 
from priestly inventions, that they belong rather to the type of Sonder- 
gotter,’ who are genuinely popular figures, even if in the texts we have we can 
trace priestly elaboration. So again we cannot with any security assert that 
the fire as the means of sacrifice is a sign of priestly intervention, as opposed 
to the simpler Bali sacrifice in which the object offered is deposited on the 
ground or thrown into the air or hung on a tree. Fire, we must remember, is 
itself a deity, and the suggestion that it was so only to the priests is contrary to 
the ethnic fact of primitive fire worship. Thus offerings in the fire for it were 


1 Arbman, Rudra, pp. 64 ff. ® See below, Chap. 5, § 1 (c); Chap. 12, § 5. 
2 See below, Chap. 20, §§ 13, 14, 18, 20. 


56 The Sources [Part I 


natural and primitive, and we can hardly assert that the giving to the gods of 
offerings in the fire was not a simple development even for the popular mind. 

Other points of distinction between the priestly and the popular faith are 
equally difficult to determine. That the priests insisted on an aniconic 
worship while the people made offerings to idols is certainly unproved, and 
implausible. That the people rejoiced in bloody offerings while the priests 
objected to them contradicts the whole ritual of the animal offering, even if the 
blood of the victim is usually assigned to the Raksases to appease them, for 
this seems in Indian ritual the general use of the blood. The priests recognize 
the importance of women only in certain rites, namely those affecting marriage 
and agriculture ; but there is no distinction here between hieratic and popular 
views, for primitive peoples recognize in these fields the special importance of 
women, and we see that as often the priests were in full harmony with popular 
views. 

More certain are other points of divergence. The priests do not like 
phallus worshippers,! but this is probably rather a distinction between Aryan 
and non-Aryan views than between hieratic and popular, and, while they 
recognize, they seem unenthusiastic regarding the mad Muni? who drinks 
poison—presumably some drug—from the same cup as Rudra. In this case, 
however, we have rather the opposition of one esoteric view to another, that 
of the sacrificial priests against the Yogin. 

The priests, in fact, instead of standing apart from ordinary life and 
developing their own views in indifference to those of the people, appear to 
have aimed, as time went on, at absorbing en masse the popular rites and deck- 
ing them out with their own poetry and their ritual elaboration.’ If at one 
time they devoted themselves to certain cults only, they repaired this error 
in working up the whole field of domestic rites and magic, and it was by this 
fact that, preluding the process which has created Hinduism, they secured the 
firm hold on the people which enabled Brahmanism to defy the assaults of 
Buddhism and Jainism, neither of which ever succeeded in substituting any- 
thing effective for the ritual of the simple things of life, which was carried out 
by or under the directions of the priest. So far from the texts hinting at 
distaste for the popular ritual, they rather exhibit the priests determined to 
secure their participation in it to the fullest extent, at the expense of the field 
of action which at first lay open to the head of the family as his own domestic 
priest. If we are to understand aright the development of the Vedic priest- 
hood we must think of the elaboration in certain families little by little of some 
outstanding sacrifices, especially that of Soma, and then the application of the 
new sacerdotalism to the religion of everyday life. Doubtless the application 
was not wholly complete ; it is quite possible that the popular religion made 


ORY. vil. 2.5 x. 09.3. hanging of offerings on a tree are 
* RV. x. 1386; cf. below, Chap. 22, § 9. faithfully kept, and in it and the 
* Cf. e. g. the working up of the Traiyam- Baudhyavihara the use of leaves in 


bakahoma, where such details as the lieu of ladles is a relic of old usage. 


Chap. 4] Popular and Hieratic Religion 57 


more of tree worship than appears in our rituals, but it is by no means ignored. 
The truly popular nature of the ritual is seen in the case of agricultural 
offerings of which many are prescribed. Curiously enough a completely 
inaccurate view of these is taken by Arbman,! on the score of a failure to 
recognize the importance of the celestial deities in primitive religion. The 
ritual * provides an offering of the old Bali type to sky and earth at the 
eastern boundary of the field when the plough is being spanned. It is plainly 
absurd to assert that it is not to be assumed that this ancient divine pair had 
played any role in popular religion. No more natural deities can be imagined 
than the pair for a people which had advanced to the period of regular agri- 
culture and separate fields, and it certainly did not require the priests to teach 
the peasant to what deities he should make offering. Similarly when it is 
desired to change the current of a stream an offering is made both in the fire 
and in the Bali form to Varuna ;* no more obvious god can be imagined, 
and, however far back we might seek to trace a rite of this sort, we would 
expect to find that sacrifice would be made to the lord of waters. Even when 
against pests which would injure crops we find Bali offerings 4 to Aca, ‘ hope,’ 
Acapati, ‘ the lord of hope’, Ksetrapati and the Acvins, we should gravely err 
in setting the choice of deities down to the priests. The Acvins, as the 
legends show, were clearly the great popular helping gods, Ksetrapati is the 
actual deity of the field to be protected, and, if Acad and Acdpati seem to us 
at first sight the work of the priests, we have only to remember that, apart 
from Greek and Roman religion, we have the Sondergotter of the Lithuanians, 
a people not dominated by priestly influence.® Even in the case where rites 
are evidently or probably performed to deities different from those who 
primarily received them, we must exercise caution in ascribing even the 
change of deity, and still more the rite itself to priestly invention. The 
priests, we may be assured, were not required always to intervene to induce the 
peasant to regard a great god such as Rudra-Civa, Visnu, or even Brahman, 
as the recipient of an offering originally made to some minor and less person- 
alized spirit.® 
1 Rudra, p. 139, n.1. Contrast Hillebrandt, * Kauc. xl. 7-9. 

Ved. Myth., pp. 7 ff., who justly cites ‘4 Kaug. li. 21 f. 

the evidence of Tylor (Primitive Culture, ° Usener, Griechische Gotternamen, pp. 279 ff. 

chap. viii), Brinton (Religions of Primi- _° As in the funeral rite of the Vaikhanasa 


tive Peoples, pp. 137 ff.), &c. Sutra (Caland, Die altind. Todten- und 
2 CGS. iv. 18. 2. Bestattungsgebrauche, p. 26.) 


PART II. THE GODS AND DEMONS 
OF THE VEDA 


CHAPTER 5 
THE NATURE OF THE GODS AND DEMONS 


$1. Nature Gods and Abstract Deities 


(a) ANTHROPOMORPHISM 


ALREADY in the period of Indo-European unity there had in all probability 
' arisen the conception of anthropomorphic deities of the sky, such as Dyaus, 
_ Mitra, or the Aevins, and it is therefore only natural that in the main the high 
gods of the Rigveda should be essentially conceived as human, as men of 
supernatural power, and free from death, but still as subject to birth and akin 
in their family relation to men. But, though it would be wrong to ignore the 
anthropomorphic ! character of the gods, the Vedic pantheon has none of the 
clear cut figures of the Greek, and unlike the Greek deities it is seldom 
difficult to doubt that the anthropomorphic forms but faintly veil phenomena 
of nature. The difference is so striking that it is impossible to ascribe it to a 
mere difference between the records of the two religions, the secular and 
romantic poetry of Homer on the one hand, and the formal hymns used in the 
sacrifice of the Rigveda on the other. It is most probable that much of the 
vagueness of the physical nature of the Greek gods and goddesses is due to 
their origin either from direct borrowing from the Aegean people of Greece, or 
from contamination with Aegean deities. In the process of amalgamation 
of beliefs it is scarcely surprising that the outlines of the characters of the 
gods should have been hopelessly blurred in comparison with the much 
clearer and more transparent figures of the Vedic hymns. 

The degree of anthropomorphism exhibited by the Vedic deities is ex- 
tremely variable. In some cases the active element is constantly present, 
and the view taken may be set down as almost animatistic: the waters are 
indeed goddesses, but they are also wholesome to drink ; the goddess Dawn 


* Arbman’s theory (Rudra, pp. 4 ff.) that * Cf. Hall, PSBA. xxxi. 164 ff.; Evans, 
the popular religion had far more JHS. xxi. 161 ff. See also Farnell, 
fully personalized gods is clearly un- Greece and Babylon, pp. 72 ff. for 


tenable, and contradicts all that we 
know of primitive religion. What is 
true is that the Vedic texts show both 
imperfect anthropomorphism and con- 
tamination of deities. 


Hellenic anthropomorphism. Cf. Cook, 
Zeus, i. 9ff.; Helm, Aligerm. Rel. i. 
186 f., 194 ff.; Fox, Greek and Roman 
Mythology, p. xlviii ; MacCulloch, Celtic 
Mythology, pp. 132 f. 


Chap. 5] Nature Gods and Abstract Deities 59 


bares her bosom like a beautiful maiden, but there is comparison here rather 
than identity, and, if in some cases the goddess seems to be considered as one 
who appears morn after morn to men, in others each separate dawn is a fresh 


divinity. Sirya, the sun, by his rising is born as the child of the sky ; the ' 


constant presence of the actual deity prevents any real development of anthro- 
pomorphism. The same consideration affects Agni, who never appears as a 


god disconnected from his element of fire: when he is hidden in the waters | 
or in the clouds, it is as fire : as messenger of men he is the fire of the sacrifice | 


flaming up to heaven to bring gods and men together. But the difficulties of 
this view were clearly felt in connexion with the question of the innumerable 
fires of earth and their relation to the god. Strictly speaking he must be 
present in each, and this view is often taken, but there appears also the con- 
ception that in some degree the god is free from the element and able to come 
to it, not merely to be manifested in it when it is produced. The evidence for 
this view is, however, it is important to note, late: in the Rigveda it is only 
suggested by the doubtful! phrase in a late hymn, in which Agni when 
enkindled at the sacrifice is said to sit down as priest coming to his own home, 
a conception based on the idea of the relation of the spirit of man to the spirit 
world to which he fares on death. In the ceremony of the piling of the fire 
altar, when the flame is lighted, Agni is invoked in the Yajurveda 2 to come 
from the furthest distance, and it is possible that in the ritual,? when at the 
kindling of the fire a horse is brought up to the place of kindling, it is due to the 
desire to induce Agni through his presence in his symbol to draw near to and 
enter the element which has been kindled. The contrast with the figure of 
Agni in later literature such as the epic is marked : in the epic the gods have 
long ceased to be nearly as closely connected with their natural bases as in the 
Rigveda, and Agni can figure as the main personage in tales which never had 
any relation to the fire as an element. 

Indra, on the other hand, is a god who has in considerable measure 4 been 
emancipated from his connexion with the phenomena which produced the 
conception, primarily in all probability the thunderstorm, which brings down 
the rain to earth, one of the greatest of India’s natural phenomena. It is 
possible enough that this freedom from strict connexion with nature is due to 
the difference of the elemental conception: the sun, the dawn, the waters, 
and fire are things ever seen, and the names bring back to the poet at once 
their essential character, but in the case of Indra the meaning of his appella- 
tion was as obscure to the Vedic poet as itis tous. Moreover, the fierce nature 
of Indra made him suited to be the war god of the conquering Aryans, and 
afforded thus a point of departure permitting of the development of other than 
nature myths. A similar contrast is seen in Germany between the character of 


1 RV. x. 12.1; Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, ‘ Cf., e. g., Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, p. 298, 

p. 44 (but see p. 529, n. 2). who thinks he might be deemed a 
2 Weber, Ind. Stud. xiii. 227. deified man, a type of culture hero. 
‘CB. ii. 1. 4. 17. 


60 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


the sun and the storm god. The same consideration applies in even stronger 
degree to Mitra and Varuna: the identity of Mitra with the sun is strongly 
supported, but, whereas the personality of Stirya remains, like that of the 
Greek Helios, of the most shadowy character, and Sirya is always the material 
sun, Mitra even in the Avesta is far from chained to his natural basis: he 
comes into view over the mountain of sunrise, it is said, before the sun, and 
in the Rigveda his connexion with the sun can only be made certain by the 
parallelism of the Avesta, where he has distinct solar features: like Varuna 
he is a celestial god who watches over men and stirs them with his speech to 
activity, while he supports heaven and earth. Varuna is even more free from 
traces of nature, so that it remains yet doubtful whether that nature was 
really as is most probable the sky : his essential feature has nothing necessarily 
connected with his natural background: he is the lord of holy order, the 
watcher of men, whose vigilance nothing can escape. The Acvins also have 
lost any clear trace of their origin in nature: whatever that was, they are 
two radiant youths who travel in their chariot across the sky, and above all 
bring aid to men in trouble. The older school of mythology felt bound to seek 
for and find the natural background to all the myths of the Aevins :1 the effort 
was doubtless futile, for, when once the gods attained, by whatever means and 
from whatever cause, the character of saviours of men, any cultural develop- 
ment and any feat of man in which he deemed himself preserved by divine 
guidance and assistance could be ascribed to the gods. Thus there could be 
developed myths which in no conceivable way were evernaturemyths; there 
are also myths of origins, philosophical and allegorical myths, and myths of the 
hereafter, while again many nature myths are transformed by a poetic fancy, 
which has but little connexion with the original groundwork. The waters as 
we have seen are goddesses who do not free themselves from the element, 
but there exist figures which have been set free, the Apsarases: in the Rigveda? 
we find that they can be treated exactly like the waters and invoked to mix 
with the Soma, but their normal aspect is that of water maidens, who can 
freely leave their element and unite with mortal men, showing traits which 
render them the sisters of the Germanic swan maidens, and similar figures in 
many other religions. In these love adventures, it would surely be useless to 
find nature mythology. Soma again in the Rigveda and later is never fully 
anthropomorphic, though in the Avesta he appears to the priest in the form 
of a man of extreme beauty, but an interesting myth of the Rigveda? recounts 
the bringing down of Soma from the sky to Indra : the bird which bears down 
the drink is detected by the archer Kreanu who guards the Soma, and who 
shoots an arrow at it, failing to kill it but knocking off a feather: in this 
episode it is clearly an error to seek to explain mythically the item of the shot 
of the archer: we have, introduced from ordinary life, a natural and simple 


1 See, e. g., Max Miiller (Beitr. zu einer wiss. ? ix. 78. 3. 
Myth. ii. 150 ff.) on the legend of the * iv. 26 and 27. 
quail (vartikd) saved from the wolf. 


Chap. 5] Nature Gods and Abstract Deities 61 
motive.t Such intermixture of extraneous conceptions is specially frequent 
in connexion with sacrificial rites: when the god Rudra appears as a great 
dark man to Nabhanedistha at the place of sacrifice, and demands as his 
share all that is left over from the offering to other gods, which has just been 
performed,? it is perfectly clear that we are dealing with a free invention of the 
priestly fancy. 

One further function of the mythical faculty is of importance in regard to 
the nature gods. It was a natural conception which transferred to heaven the 
relations of men, and set beside each god a goddess to be his wife, even as 
on earth each Indian had one wife or more to share his home. The naive 
simplicity * of the practice, which may have been helped by the prevailing 
conception of the sky as father, and earth as mother, reveals itself in the 
characteristic manner in which the names of the goddesses of this class are 
formed, being derived directly from their husbands’ names by the use of 
a feminine termination. Indrani, for example, the wife of Indra, has no myth 
of nature to explain her existence: she is quite different in this regard from 
the goddess Dawn, who is a natural phenomenon. The creation of such types 
led to further developments in myth, undermining natural mythology. One 
of the most obscure hymns of the Rigveda tells us of a dispute between Indra 
and Indrani over a being styled Vrsakapi, ‘ male ape’ ; to seek in it a natura- 
listic interpretation is rendered from the outset almost hopeless when we 
recognize that the chief figure in the dispute, the angry Indrani, is clearly not 
a nature personification in any sense. It must, however, be admitted that this 
field of myth was little exploited in the literature left to us : it is also of interest 
to note that the pale figure of Dione, beside Zeus, suggests that the process 
which produced Indrani and her fellows was already in working in the Indo- 
European period.® 


(b) THERIOMORPHISM AND THE WoRSHIP OF ANIMALS 


While most of the Vedic nature deities are normally conceived as anthro- 
pomorphic, there did not prevail any rigid exclusion of theriomorphic con- 
ceptions of the deities. It is often asserted, even by Oldenberg,* that in earlier 
periods of religion theriomorphic conceptions were more frequent than 
anthropomorphic, but the proof for such a theory seems to be wholly lacking. 


1 Bloomfield, JAOS. xvi. 1-24. 5 Kretschmer, Gesch. der griech. Sprache, 
* AB. 14. p. 91. Cf. perhaps Freyr and Freyja, 
’ It is vastly more developed in the epic ; Fjorgynn and Fjorgyn. 

Hopkins, Epic Myth., pp. 61 ff. 6 Rel. des Veda*, pp. 39, 67. Cf. Helm, 
4 RV. x. 86; von Bradke, ZDMG. xlvi. Altgerm. Rel. i. 202 ff., who also insists 


465; Bloomfield, ibid. xlviii. 541 ff. ; 
Geldner, Ved. Stud. ii. 109; Winter- 
nitz, VOJ. xxiii. 187; Keith, JRAS. 
1911, p. 1005 ; Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. 
iii. 278, n. 2; Charpentier, Die Supar- 
nasage, pp. 100-2; Oldenberg, Rel. 
des Veda’*, pp. 166 ff. 


(p. 18) that the primitive apperception 
sees the soul in a beast form before a 
human form, following the views of 
Wundt (Elemente der Volkerpsychologie, 
pp. 173 ff.); for a good criticism, see 
van Gennep, L’état actuel du probleme 
totémique, pp. 99 ff. 


62 The Gods and Demons of the Veda {Part IL 


That the storm god should be conceived in human form appears to be as 
natural and as primitive as that he should be ascribed an animal form, unless 
indeed we are to be asked to believe that religious conceptions of animal gods 
were formed before the development of man as such. Apart, however, from 
theories such as these, there can be no question of the predominance of anthro- 
pomorphism in the Rigveda, while at the same time theriomorphism is not 
unknown, a condition which accords well with the observed fact that the dis- 
tinction of man and beast is never drawn by early peoples with the definite 
precision of modern feeling. Two deities are recorded for us in animal form 
only, the one-footed goat, Aja Ekapad, and the serpent of the deep, Ahi 
Budhnya: it is not likely that either is in origin an animal deity: the one- 
footed goat may be the lightning flash that descends to earth in a single 
streak: the serpent has clear mythological meaning in its application to 
Vrtra, the demon who is defeated by Indra, and who holds back the waters of 
the clouds which are desired. The mother of the Maruts, gods of the storm 
wind, is called the dappled cow, which deems to have been felt as a description 
of the clouds whence sprang the rain. The Adityas themselves, sons of Aditi, 
herself either a personification of freedom, or an abstraction derived from their 
name, are also cow-born, reflecting perhaps—not probably—a conception of 
the birth of the luminaries from a celestial cow.1 The sacrificial food is 
personified as early in the Rigveda as a lady with hands full of butter, but she 
is also styled a cow, and in the ritual * the cow is addressed with the words, 
‘Come, o Ida, o Aditi.’ Agni is often conceived of as a horse, and Indra as a 
bull. The clouds when the rain is brought down are normally and usually 
styled the cows. Saranyi according to an old tradition becomes a mare and 
in that condition brings forth the two Acvins. 

Animals also figure in the entourage of the gods, and in this case it is only 
fair to allow for the natural tendency to assimilate gods to men and to give 
them animal followers. The goddess Sarama, who in dog shape finds for Indra 
the cows, and who has been explained as a wind-spirit, parallel to Hermes,® 
need not be assumed to be more than a copy of the ordinary facts of life on 
earth. The horses of the gods are likewise transferred from the human to the 
divine sphere. In other cases, however, it is quite possible to suspect that 
there lies beneath an animal as companion of the god a trace of the god himself. 
The eagle brings the Soma down to Indra, but already in the Rigveda there is 
a variant form 'of the myth which indicates that the Soma was obtained by 
Indra in the form of an eagle,* and, if we interpret the myth in the form of the 
bringing down to earth of the generous moisture by the action of the thunder 


? Cf. AV. viii. 9. 1, where the two calves of Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, p. 144. 
Viraj may be sun and moon, children The view that the bird is Visnu 
of dawn. (Johannson, Solfageln i Indien, p. 21; 

* Bergaigne, Rel. Véd. i. 325. Charpentier, Die Suparnasage, pp. 

* Cf. Oertel, Stud. zur verg!. Lit. viii (1908), 324 ff.) is less plausible. Sometimes 
124. the Soma is the eagle. 


4 RV. x. 99.8; Bloomfield, JAOS. xvi. 8 ; 


Chap. 5] Nature Gods and Abstract Deities 63 


storm and the descent of the rain amid lightning, it becomes tempting to 
assume that the eagle was none other throughout than the god Indra. Pisan, 
again, has a team of goats, but we find that in the Rigveda he is a knower of 
paths, while at the horse sacrifice a goat is killed to precede the horse, as it 
seems, to the world of death:+ a goat too is slaughtered at the ceremony 
of the burning of the dead :* hence it is a conjecture not without plausibility 
that the goat was a form of Pisan, as the sure-footed animal which could 
wander with safety over distant and difficult ways. The Acvins, again, are 
horsemen as their name denotes, and they are never described as actual 
horses: yet their mother according to an old, though not Rigvedie, tradition,* 
is a mare, and it is a legitimate hypothesis, though one wholly incapable of 
proof, that once they were conceived as in horse shape as well as in human 
shape; in yet other religions they may have been conceived as in the shape 
of birds. In the case of Indra and the eagle some confirmation is lent by the 
Bahram Ya&St * of the Avesta in which we learn of Verethraghna flying to 
_ Zoroaster in the form of the bird Varaghna, swiftest of all birds. But these 
cases of theriomorphism must be sharply distinguished from those of the 
birds of omen, which are styled messengers of the Fathers or of Yama: ® 
the birds themselves were, we need not doubt, quasi-deities in their own right 
before they were reduced to the rank of messengers, and we need not sup- 
pose that their position as givers of omens is due to their being regarded as 
embodiments of souls of the dead. The horse Acvins, if they ever existed, 
were not divine horses, but theriomorphic conceptions of nature powers.” 

In comparison with the normal anthropomorphic conceptions of the deity 
and the less frequent theriomorphic, there are comparatively few instances in 
Vedic worship of the direct and wholly animatistic ® veneration of natural 
objects. The most obvious is the cult of the snakes, which is not, however, 
Rigvedic, but probably borrowed from the aboriginal population, and 
occasional propitiation of ants, moles, &c. 


(c) ANIMATISM SONDERGOTTER AND ABSTRACT DEITIES 


Beside the concrete figures of the great nature gods with their extended 
spheres of action, there stand deities with definitely limited functions, though 
also nature powers. Of such deities we have good examples in the Ksetrasya 
Pati and Vastospati, who appear in the Rigveda itself. These are, of course, 


1 RV. i. 162. 2-4. 

ORV ox Oa. 

* RV. x. 17. 2 as rendered by Sayana 
with Yaska, Nir. xii. 10. Cf. Lanman, 
Sanskrit Reader, p. 381; Weber, Ind. 
Stud. xvii. 310; Oldenberg, Rgveda- 
Noten, ii. 217; Bloomfield, JAOS. 
xv. 185. 

* Cf. Carnoy, Iranian Mythology, pp. 272 ff. 

® RV. ii, 42.2; x. 165; AV. vi. 27-9; xi. 


252. LUST A ive 28/ sy AUC HOXXIX 3) CL 
the jackal, HGS. i. 16. 19. 

5 See Arbman, Rudra, pp. 255 ff. 

7 See Farnell’s protest against prevalent 
errors as to animal forms (Greece and 
Babylon, pp. 55 ff., 70 ff.; Greek Hero 
Cults, pp. 177, 214, 215). 

* Marett, Threshold of Religion, pp. 15, 16, 
20; Goblet d’Alviella, Croyances, ii. 
120. 


64 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


no abstract deities ; they are, the one, the spirit who dwells in the field, the 
other, the spirit who has his abode in the house, and neither conception can be 
asserted with any plausibility to be later than the period of the growth of 
belief in the great gods. More concrete still are such cases as Sita, the furrow, 
and Urvara, the field. It is significant of the great development of personifica- 
tion later that in the Ramayana Sita is predominantly a mortal woman, wife 
of Rama, and daughter of Janaka. Traces, indeed, remain of her former 
divinity, for the legend tells that hers was no normal birth, but she sprang 
to life from the furrow when her father was ploughing, and, at the end, when 
she determines by a conclusive proof to show to Rama and his court that her 
purity had suffered nothing at the hands of Ravana during her enforced abode 
in the palace of her captor, her prayer to the goddess Earth is answered by the 
appearance of the deity, who takes her into her bosom. Not essentially 
different from these instances are the prayers addressed and the reverence paid 
by the warrior to his weapons, the chariot, the arrow, and the drum, by the 
ploughman to the ploughshare, and by the dicer to his dice. Plants and trees 
are sometimes conceived in this way, but, as all over the world, tree spirits, like 
water nymphs, tend to become less closely connected with their material 
embodiment and to pass over into anthropomorphic form. 

We find also deities of very limited activity, who serve but one definite 
purpose. Thus in the Atharvaveda ? the spirit Uttuda is invoked to stir up a 
damsel to love, while even in the Rigveda ® it is possible that Nivartana is felt 
as a divine power which moves the cows when departed to return to their 
place. These instances correspond closely with the Sondergétter 4 of Usener 
evidenced by the Indigitamenta in Rome, and the Lithuanian spirits pre- 
siding over all sorts of departments of nature and human activity. It is 
argued by Usener that the great nature deities are derived from such special 
deities, and doubtless there is no difficulty on conceiving the growth of such 
divinities to a more important status. The claim, however, of general 
derivation is clearly untenable. There is much more force in the view which 
sees in these Sondergétter a distinct mental attitude from that involved in 
the case of the worship of the great gods. The latter impress themselves on the 
mind of the worshipper, commanding his respect and fear; the former cor- 
respond with the development of the animistic conception of everything in the 
world as animated by a spirit, but not necessarily a source of reverence, 
though from time to time an activity may be desired to operate to serve one’s 
end, and for that purpose temporary reverence may be requisite.° The 
worship of the sun or the storm is prima facie likely to be older than respect 
paid to Vastospati or Ksetrasya Pati, deities who imply settled life and agri- 


1 Cf. H. Jacobi, Das Radmdyana, p. 130; praeesse ; hos Varro certos deos ap- 
Hopkins, Epic Myth., p. 12. pellat ; Usener, Gotternamen ; Schrader, 

PraNW.y BOs As Reallexicon der idg. Alt. 679 f. 

+ x. 19.8. ® See e.g. Carnoy, Les Indo-Européens, 

‘Cf. Servius, Aen. ii. 141: pontifices p. 207. 


dicunt singulis actibus proprios deos 


Chap. 5] Nature Gods and Abstract Deities 65 


culture, and still less can Uttuda or Nivartana claim superior antiquity. It is, 
therefore, probably better to recognize that the worship of the sun and of 
these Sondergétter ultimately rests on the basis of animatism, regarded 
as that attitude! which ‘ endows [what we now consider] inanimate and 
material objects with quasi-human consciousness and emotions, and some- 
times with a superhuman power and volition which suggest worship’, and 
which passes over to animism. On that view it is natural to hold that worship 
was first given to the great phenomena, and only by a later process of more 
abstract thought was it accorded to such entities as Uttuda or Nivartana. 

A further development of this attitude of mind gives us gods who have no 
immediate concrete background of any kind, comparable to such abstract 
deities as Fides, which form an important and interesting part of Roman 
religion and have recently received careful investigation from Axtell ? among 
others. To call them abstract is perhaps misleading : it is not to be supposed 
that in the period of their creation they were felt to be other than real powers. 
It is possible that the creation of such figures goes back to Indo-Iranian times, 
for the goddess Puramdhi, ‘ plenteousness’, is paralleled by Parendi in the 
Avesta.? Such conceptions are found already in the Rigveda in such shapes as 
Wrath and Speech. Here too must be reckoned such figures as the gods 
Savitr, Dhatr, Tratr and Tvastr, whose names all denote them as agent gods, 
who impel, create, protect, and produce. The connexion of Savitr with the sun 
is fairly close, and is preserved from the earliest times in the repetition 
of the Savitri verse,t when in the morning the orthodox Indian householder 
salutes the rising sun with the words: ‘That desirable glory of the god Savitr 
we meditate, that he may inspire our thoughts.’ It is at least possible, 
therefore, that in its origin Savitr was not an independent creation, but was 
an epithet of Sirya, but that question is of little importance: the essential 
feature of the god is not his original basis, but his function as the inspirer 
or impeller to holy sacrifice : the ritual act is repeatedly said in the Yajurveda 
to be done ‘ on the instigation of the god Savitr’. To this stage of the creative 
imagination belongs also the conception of such gods as Prajapati, the lord 
of all creatures, who is the great creator god, and who cannot be assigned to 
any natural basis. Perhaps too here must be reckoned the figure of Brhaspati* 
or Brahmanaspati, ‘the lord of prayer’. The prayer with its magic potency 
or its effective appeal—the two ideas pass into each other in the later Rigveda 
—and the priest who wields this powerful instrument are blended in the 


1 See Farnell, Greek Hero Cults, p. 79. 

2 The Deification of Abstract Ideas in Roman 
Literature and Inscriptions (1907). See 
also Warde Fowler, Religious Experience 


Xxxvi. 309, where Aramatiis only piety ; 
ef. Muséon (n.s.), Xili. 133, n. 1, against 
Sayana, RV. vii. 36. 8; viii. 42. 3; 
Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, p. 10. 

4 RV35) 111-1.625 10% 


of the Roman People, pp. 285, 291, 450, 
451. 

* Aramati and Armaiti are a parallel case, 
unless both originally had reference 
to earth; contra, Carnoy, JAOS. 


5 [u.0.s. 31] 


Cf. the epic goddess 
Savitri; Hopkins, Epic Myth., p. 86. 

5 brh is clearly an older form of brahman ; 
see Oldenberg, Die Lehre der Upani- 
shaden, p. 46, n. 1. 


66 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part IL 


conception of the lord of prayer. Nor to this theory is it any conclusive objec- 
tion that the god is credited in the Rigveda with abundant activity which 
seems to rest on nature myths, in particular the cleaving of the caves in the 
mountains and the setting free of the cows, a story which is usually deemed to be 
a myth of the setting free of the dawns from the darkness of the storm. It is 
possible that, as it is the prayer which is potent to induce Indra to perform his 
great feats of strength, so the prayer comes to be ranked with him in its 
hypostatized form as Brhaspati and even to take his place. The most likely 
alternative view is to conceive that the name is an epithet of Agni, and that 
the conception was then developed independently of Agni’s natural basis 
by the priest : this is a perfectly conceivable idea, but in either case the essen- 
tial feature is the fact that the natural basis, if any, is not the source of the 
mythology. 


§ 2. Fetishism 


The worship of natural objects, whether celestial, ethereal or terrestrial, 
is sharply to be distinguished from the reverence paid to earthly objects or 
animals, not as in themselves normally or continually divine, but because for 
a certain purpose and in certain conditions they are deemed to be filled with 
the divine spirit.1 It is clear, however obvious the distinction is as a matter of 
theory, that in many cases it must be extremely difficult to distinguish the 
two phenomena. A simple example of the difficulty is afforded by the con- 
trast which seems to exist between the reverence paid by the priest to his 
offering implements, such as the pressing stones and the offering post, and 
that paid by the warrior to his weapons. In both cases the reverence is that 
paid to the work of human hands, but it can hardly be held in the case of the 
warrior that his weapons are conceived as being filled by any external spirit 
for the time being: rather they have, though made by human hands, when 
made, a life and reality of their own, which renders it right on special occasions 
that they should receive due honour and veneration. For the whole time of 
their existence as such, before they are destroyed by the event of war or 
abandoned as outworn, they retain this character of their own. On the other 
hand, the reverence paid to the pressing stones and other implements of the 
sacrifice seems far more naturally to be attributed to the holy character of the 
sacrificial ground and of the surroundings through the presence of the god. 
The sacred strew on which the god is invited to take his seat and all the im- 
plements must surely be filled with the divine afflatus for the period of the 
offering. The offering post in the animal sacrifice is solemnly anointed, 
and surrounded with a girdle which acts in some measure as clothing. It has 


1 This is perhaps the most useful sense of Die nichtmenschengestaltigen Gétter der 
the term fetishism, which sometimes is Griechen (1903) ; Haddon, Magic and 
applied to what is here called anima- Fetishism (1906) ; R. M. Meyer, Archivo 
tism. See C. de Brosses, Du culte des fiir Rel., xi. 320 ff. ; Hopkins, Hist. of 
dieux fétiches (Paris, 1760); Bastian, Rel., pp. 35 f. 


Uber Fetischismus (1894); de Visser, 


Chap. 5] Fetishism 67 


been suggested that in this action we are to see the bodily presence of the 
god, as in the case of the Semitic ASera on one interpretation, and in the 
alternative Oldenberg ! suggests that the treatment of the post is a relic of tree 
worship. Neither explanation is absolutely necessary ; we need not suppose 
that the post was originally placed there for any other than its clear pur- 
pose to hold the sacrificial victim fast for sacrifice, but once there it was 
impossible that it should not be in some degree filled with the divine spirit, 
apart from its divine connexion with the tree spirit. 

In other cases the purely temporary nature of the divine character of the 
fetish is quite obvious. Thus in the household ritual, during the nights after 
marriage in which the newly wedded pair are bidden to observe chastity, 
there is placed between them a staff clad in a garment and made fragrant, 
which is traditionally asserted to be the Gandharva Vicvavasu, and the 
tradition is confirmed by the fact that the ritual prescribes for the taking away 
of the staff a formula addressed to that spirit.2 Another fetish is the wheel 
which represents the sun :? in the Vajapeya sacrifice a wheel-shaped cake of 
grain is placed on the top of the post, to which the animal victim is tied : 
a ladder is brought : the sacrificer mounts upon it saying to his wife : ‘ Come, 
let us two mount to the sun.’ He then mounts and seizes the wheel, saying, 
‘We have attained the sun, O gods.’* At the Mahavrata festival of the winter 
solstice an Aryan and a Cidra strove over a white round skin, which is stated 
to be a symbol of the sun: the Aryan conquers and strikes down the Cidra 
with the skin. There can be no doubt of the solar nature of the wheel, and 
the existence of this sun symbol among the Celts and the Germans suggests 
that possibly the symbolism may be Indo-European. A torch can also serve 
to represent the sun ; if the offerer has forgotten to perform a libation before 
sunset, he can perform it to the light of a torch which brings back the light, 
or he can use gold in place of the sun.® This motive is of constant occurrence : 
in the piling of the fire altar a gold plate is set down to be an image of the sun.’ 
Agni, as fire, is closely connected with gold : it is forbidden to study the Veda 
in a place where there is neither fire nor gold: gold is the seed of Agni, and in 
the piling of the fire altar ® there is placed in the erection the gold figure of a 
man, who seems to be intended to represent Agni: while butter is poured over 
the figure, prayers are offered to Agni, and that fire is latent in the figure is 
shown by the warning to the priests not to pass before it, lest it consume them 
1 Rel. des Veda*, pp. 87, 88. For fetishes in * For Germany see Helm, op. cit. i. 173 ff. ; 

Greece and Babylon see Farnell, for the Celts, Gaidoz, Etudes sur la 

Greece and Babylon, pp. 225 ff. For mythologie gauloise (1886). 

religious vessels as fetishes in Rome in ‘4 Weber, Ueber den Vajapeya, pp. 20, 34. 

the worship of the Dea Dia, see Warde * Keith, Cankhdyana Aranyaka, pp. 80 ff. ; 

Fowler, Religious Experience of the von Schroeder, Arische Religion, ii. 17, 

Roman People, pp. 436, 489, 490. 38, 66 f. 

Helm (Aligerm. Rel. i. 20 ff.) insists on ° CB. xii. 4. 4. 6. 


magic potencies as essentialelements of 7 CB. vii. 4. 1. 10. 
fetishism. 8 Weber, Ind. Stud. xiii. 228 ff. 


* Winternitz, Altind. Hochzeitsrituell, p. 88. 


5* 


68 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part I] 


with fire. A similar rule forbids the priest to carry the Soma before the altars 
allotted to each priest, as they are the symbols of the guardians of the Soma, 
and would therefore be inclined to take the Soma away from the priests that 
were bearing it.1 In the case of the Pravargya ceremony, milk is made hot for 
the Acvins in a great jar, the Mahavira, * great hero’, pot: according to one 
authority the pot was given some semblance of a human face, and it is difficult 
to doubt that this pot was intended as a symbol of the sun. Equally symbolic 
would be its use if we were to accept a suggestion made with all circumspec- 
tion by Oldenberg * that we may have here a trace of the myth of the cutting 
off of the head of Makha, who is a demon of quite unknown nature, by Indra, 
and the drinking of milk from this ghastly relic, just as it seems from the body 
of Namuci, a demon with which Makha may have had associations, sweetness 
is said to have come. 

Other examples of this fetishism can easily be cited, but in comparison 
with them a passage in the Rigveda‘ stands in a certain isolation of character. 
It is there said by a poet: ‘ Who will buy this my Indra for ten cows? When 
he hath conquered his foe, let him return it to me!’ This passage can have 
but one sense: some fetish of Indra must be meant, whether a rough anthro- 
pomorphic picture or merely something much ruder we cannot say : the latter 
view has, however, the greater probability, in that statues of deities are other- 
wise not hinted at until the end of the Vedic period,® when they may have been 
introduced under Western influences. It is characteristic that the god who 
is the hero of this episode is the warrior god, Indra: no other deity of first-rate 
importance in the Rigveda is treated habitually with such lightness of spirit ® 
as he is, and the fact that he is dealt with in this commercial spirit reminds us 
that already in this age there were men who questioned the existence of the 
god Indra, perhaps because, unlike deities such as the Sun or Dawn, he was 
not to be discerned by the naked eye day by day. 

Animals, too, later at least, served as living fetishes: of this, the instances, 
though not numerous, are singularly clear. At the Sakamedhas sacrifice, in an 
offering to Indra a bull was invoked: when it bellowed the offering was made ;? 
the meaning is made plain beyond doubt not only by the fact that Indra is 
elsewhere called a bull, that in the Atharvaveda § a bull is addressed with the 
words * Men call thee Indra’, and that Verethraghna, the Avestan parallel 
to Indra, has a bull form, but by the express assertion of the Brahmana ® 
that in the rite Indra is thus invoked to come to slay Vrtra, and the bellowing 
of the bull establishes clearly the fact that the god has come with satisfaction 


1 Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. i. 443 ff. Prthivi of the eighth century B.c. 

* Eggeling, SBE. xliv. pp. xlvi ff.; Hille- (CHI. i. 616) is wholly unproved and 
brandt, Ved. Myth., p. 11, n. 2. implausible. 

3 Rel. des Veda', p. 89. ° Cf. the list of his misdeeds, Oertel, JAOS. 

4 iv. 24. 10. XIXseL LS fe 


° The suggestion that the female figure on 7? Weber, Ind. Stud. x. 341. 
a gold leaf found in a Lauriyéa Nandan- ® ix. 4. 9. 
garh tumulus is a presentation of * QB. ii. 5. 3.18. 


OE EE 


Chap. 5] Fetishism 69 


to receive the offering proffered to him by the sacrificer. Another sacrifice, 
recorded for us only in the Grhya ritual, the Cilagava, shows us water and 
food offered to a bull, a cow, and a calf, the two former of which are each 
placed in a hut : when they have touched the offerings, the latter are offered 
to Rudra, his consort, and the victorious one. 

The horse plays a considerable part in this capacity, especially in connexion 
with the sun, which is compared to, and described as, a white horse, and fire. 
At the Sodacin form of the Soma sacrifice when the chant at sunset is being 
performed, not only is gold held in the hands of the priest, but a horse, either 
white or black, is to be present,” clearly to represent the sun, and, in the case 
of the colour being black, to represent the setting of the sun. In the piling 
of the fire* the bricks of the fire altar are put in place in the presence of a horse, 
which is made to breathe over them; Agni thus in person superintending the 
making of the altar, which is specifically his own. Even more striking is the 
participation of the horse in the action of selecting the clay for the making of 
the fire-pan: to the place where the clay is to be found, the horse, with a goat 
and an ass, is taken: the place where the horse sets down its foot is chosen as 
the precise spot from which the clay is to be brought. The verses addressed 
to the horse before and after the process are addressed to Agni, and the goat is 
also treated in precisely the same way. Further some hairs are cut from the 
goat and mixed with the clay with the words, ‘ I mix thee herein, the well- 
born Jatavedas.’ The verses are conclusive, but the Brahmana is equally 
decided : it is recognized that the essence of the action is to bring the nature of 
Agni into the closest connexion with the fire-pan. The ass is not so treated, 
but is used merely as a beast of burden in the rite, and we cannot fairly assume 
that it was felt to be or ever was a fetish : it may, however, have been present 
for a magic purpose, the giving of virility to the performance as a whole and 
thence to the performers, but this suggestion cannot be pressed. 

The horse appears also as representative of Agni in the ceremony of kindling 
the fire from the firesticks,* a task of considerable trouble: during its per- 
formance, a horse, preferably white, but, if not, then red with black knees, 
looks on to encourage the advent of the flame: when the fire is kindled, a 
horse precedes it eastwards, and in its footsteps is the fire deposited. Ata 
certain point in the rite the priest speaks in the horse’s ear, asking it to bring 
forth that essence of Agni’s nature, which is latent in cattle. In this case also 
the goat may play a part: the goat is often connected closely with Agni, and 
may be used to watch the production of the fire in the place of the horse. Or, 
if it is found impossible to produce the fire from the sticks, it is permissible to 
make an offering in the ear of a goat: then the offerer must refrain from goat 


1 HGS. ii. 8; Arbman (Rudra, pp. 110 ff.) * TS. vi. 6.11. 6. 
wrongly accepts Haradatta’s erroneous * Weber, Ind. Stud. xiii, 220 ff. 
assumption of idols. See also BhGS. ‘4 Ap(S. v. 10.10; 14.17; KOS. iv. 8.23, 
ii. 8. Cf. Keith, JRAS. 1907, p. 937; 263° 9. 13-f, 
Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth., p. 172. 


70 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


flesh: or he may offer on Darbha grass, and then must not sit down upon it. 
The sense is clear: the holy nature of the goat or the grass prevents its being 
treated in the normal way. The goat, however, is not merely connected with 
Agni. As we have seen above, it is at least probable that the goat was used in 
the horse sacrifice and in the burial rite as a fetish of Pisan, the lord of the 
ways. The cow also could serve as a fetish, and in the ritual be hailed as Ida 
and as Aditi: in the Yajurveda the cow which is given in payment for the 
Soma is addressed as Aditi. 

These are scanty enough remains of fetishism, and we cannot assert that, 
even such as they are, they are proofs of a wider extension of the concept at an 
earlier period. The fire ritual, which is richest in them, is precisely that part of 
the religion of the Veda which is most completely sacerdotalized : the use 
of the horse and the goat may not in the slightest degree be original elements 
of the ritual, but may be deliberately introduced by the priests who were the 
most devoted admirers of symbolism, and who not only found symbolism in 
every conceivable rite, but were quite capable of inventing the rite to contain 
the symbol. The Cilagava ritual, which, as belonging to the simpler house- 
hold ritual, might be supposed to be earlier in conception, is only recorded at 
the very end of the Vedic period, and at a time when the priests had com- 
pletely brought the household ritual under their own control : its symbolism 
is entirely in accord with their modes of thought. Nor @ priori is there any 
ground, if we do not accept animism as the first step in religious life, to ascribe 
fetishism to the beginnings of religious thought, and still less to hold that 
animal fetishism is especially primitive. It is clearly derived from therio- 
morphism, which we find in the Rigveda: whether animal fetishes were 
known in the period of that Veda, as we know fetishes of lifeless objects were 
known, must remain undecided in the absence of conclusive positive evidence 
and the impossibility of satisfactory conclusions from reasoning a priori. 
It is, of course, often contended that in fetishism we must expect to find, 
and so far as records are available, do find, a chronological progression from 
the inanimate fetish through the animal form, to a half human, half animal 
form, and finally to the human form proper.! This view corresponds with the 
theory, already mentioned, under which it is held that the first conceptions 
of deities are animatistic, then theriomorphic, and only later anthropomorphic, 
so that, for instance, the sun is first represented by a wheel fetish, then by a 
horse and chariot, and only later by a man seated in a chariot or alone. The 
theory seems, however, to lack any definite foundation ; once the animatistic 
stage is passed, or even in this stage, whether man conceived his deities in 
animal or human forms appears to permit of no absolute reply ; there seems 
no ground for refusing to admit the contemporaneousness of both ideas ; we 
certainly cannot feel that Indra was pictured by primitive imagination as a 
bull more readily than as a man of superhuman prowess. As we have seen, in 
the Rigveda we have a definite suggestion of the existence of a primitive ido} 


1 Helm, Aligerm. Rel. i. 172 ff. 


Chap. 5] Fetishism 71 
_ of Indra, but no hint of animal fetishes, living or counterfeit. It is curious 
that even in the ritual we do not find the use of fetishes shaped in animal 
form ; we might have expected to discover the sun, for instance, represented 
not merely by something round, but by the semblance of a bird or a horse, 
but this is not recorded. Presumably the living animal was felt to be a more 
efficacious representative of the god. 


§ 3. Animism and the Spirits of the Dead 


The worship of natural objects and activities is by no means the whole 
basis of Vedic belief, even allowing in the fullest degree for the development of 
myth by the mythopoetic faculty, and for the growth of abstract gods not in 
any way connected with a natural basis. An independent ! source of religious 
feeling lies in the regard paid to the spirits of the dead: it does not seem 
possible to deny as regards them that from the first two aspects were present 
in the feelings of those who remained alive: on the one hand, the dead was in 
need of aid and comfort from the living, but the dead was also a potential 
source of danger to the living and must be propitiated, even if the soul was 
that of a dear one, still more so if it were the soul of an enemy or some one 
whom the living had mishandled.? It is in no way inconceivable that from the 
reverence paid to a soul there might spring up the worship of a god analogous 
to the worship of nature gods: such an origin has been suggested for part at 
least of the character of Rudra,? of the Maruts * and of Yama, but in none of 
these cases have we attained anything like probability. On the other hand, it 
is probable enough that certain mythical priestly families, including perhaps 
the Bhrgus, owe their position to the reverence paid to the dead. Nevertheless 
these families are not gods proper, nor treated as gods in the ordinary sense in 
the Veda: their human origin is distinctly remembered or believed in. 

Still less than from souls of the pious dead can we trace in the Veda any 
sign of doctrine which is later prominent in India, the view that gods, like 
Krsna, were originally men pure and simple, a doctrine to which Sir A. Lyall ® 
has attributed much, if not all, of the religion of India. That a living man 
should by reason of his magic powers be deemed to be possessed by a divinity 
and to be divine so as to become an object of worship is a conception which is 
certainly not hinted at in any way in any part of the Vedic literature: the 
1 Usener, Gétternamen, p. 254. Aligerm, Rel, i. 17 ff. 


2 Warde Fowler, Roman Ideas of Deity, * Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, p. 60; von 
pp. 23. 24; Religious Experience of the Schroeder, Arische Religion, i. 124. 
Roman People, p. 91; J. Harrison, ‘* Von Schroeder, VOJ. ix, 248 Late: Ol, 
Themis, p. 290. E. Meyer, Gesch. des Arbman, Rudra, p. 309. 

Alt.s 1.i. $$ 58 ff., lays great stressonthe ° Asiatic Studies, Ist ser., pp. 25 ff. Cf. 
feeble character of the souls of the dead, Sir W. Ridgeway, The Dramas and 
but there is some exaggeration in this Dramatic Dances of Non-European 
view, and he tends to ignore the Races (1915), with the incisive critique 


persistent tendency of the illogical 
combination of beliefs as to the dead 
in the minds of the living. Cf. Helm, 


of van Gennep, L’état actuel du pro- 
bleme totémique, pp. 317 ff. 


(Fou The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


inspired Muni or medicine man is known as early as the Rigveda, but it is 
not suggested that such a man was divine. In the later literature is found the 
idea of the divinity of kings: a king, even if but a child, is not to be despised, 
Manu tells us, since in him is incorporate a great divinity ; but in the Veda if 
there are gods in earth they are normally the Brahmans, a view which may 
even be as old as the Rigveda, and which does not allow us to do more than 
believe that the priests felt themselves as in high degree sanctified by their 
close relations with the gods. The conception that the worship of gods at all 
was born from the worship paid on earth to the inspired medicine man ? 
is not in itself a probable one, but at any rate it is wholly opposed to the 
Vedic religion as we have it. 

When, however, we pass from the world of heaven to the world of demons 
the situation is changed. If the Indian believed in and worshipped gods of 
light and nature, he was doubtless in deep fear of countless demons who 
threatened men with every kind of evil, and who had to be combated even by 
the gods. In but few cases is it possible to reduce these demons to a certain 
natural foundation : the Gandharvas, who in the later Vedic tradition have 
a somewhat hostile appearance, are probable cases of derivation from a 
natural basis, and the greater enemies of the gods, such as Vrtra, are doubtless 
naturalistic in origin. But this is not the case with many of the demons of 
the Veda, and it is a natural and probable conjecture * which sees in them 
conceptions based on the idea of hostile souls of the dead : it is easy to imagine 
that disease and troubles which fall to the share of man can be deemed to be 
produced by the souls of the hostile dead, and, once the concept of souls 
causing misfortune was arrived at, the same principle of creative activity, 
which has been seen at work in the making of new forms of gods, would 
generalize the conception of spirits which brought misfortune. 

The idea that there are hostile spirits of the dead, which are the demons 
of disease and the bringers of ill fortune, is strongly supported by the very 
widespread belief in modern India that the most of the evil spirits are such 
souls of the dead, especially of men killed by tigers, or murdered, or who com- 
mitted suicide through weariness of the misfortunes of life or other similar 


1 x. 186. 6. Cf. Chap. 22, § 9. For faint pp. 129 ff. 
Vedic beginnings of royal divinity, see * Oldenberg, Rel. des Weda*?, pp. 57-9. 
Ghoshal, History of Hindu Political Cf. for Babylonian belief, Farnell, 
Theories, pp. 27 f., and see N. N. Law, Greece and Babylon, p. 206. See also 
Ancient Indian Polity, pp. 116 f., 145 ff. Marett, Threshold of Religion, pp. 27, 
* Murray, Greek Epic’, pp. 185 f.; Anthro- 28; Wundt, Vdlkerpsychologie’, IV. i. 
pology and the Classics, p.76; Cornford, 480; Helm, Aligerm. Rel. i. 33, 34. 


Themis, pp. 220 ff. See Warde Fowler, 
Roman Ideas of Deity, p. 39, and 
P. Ehrenreich, Zeitschrift fiir Ethno- 
logie, xxxviii. 586-610, in criticism of 
K. Breysig, Die Entstehung des Gottesge- 
dankens und der Heilbringer (1905) ; 
Hopkins, Origin of Religion, pp. 67- 
72; N.N. Law, Ancient Indian Polity, 


Both Wundt (pp. 462 ff.) and Helm 
(i. 80) recognize the existence of demons 
of the malignant aspects of nature, the 
mountains, the waste spaces, air, water, 
and even the house, a factor often 
underestimated. Another element is 
provided by personified diseases (Hop- 
kins, Origin of Religion, pp. 74, 87). 


a 


Chap. 5] Animism and the Spiriis of the Dead 73 


cause.t The idea is proved to have existed for medieval India by the evidence 
of such tales as that narrated in the Sinhasanadvatringika ? of a man who was 
betrayed by his wife and who died for grief at the betrayal, but after death 
used to come to vex her in punishment for her crime, in the guise of an evil 
spirit. Earlier evidence is that of the epic which makes out that the men who 
hate Brahmans in this life become Raksasas, perhaps in the Buddhist category 
of Yama-Raksasas, if their character is that they are evil men who become 
Raksasas on death.2 The Buddhist literature also knows Yaksas and Bhitas 
who dwell in cemeteries and Yaksas who live in relic mounds. The Vedic 
evidence is not conclusive, but it is valuable: in addition to gods who were 
first men, and to gods by their deeds, who may be deemed to be the spirits of 
the friendly dead,* we find mention of Dasyus, who, assuming the appearance 
of ancestors, slip in amongst the ancestors at the funeral feast provided for 
the latter, and we are told of Asuras and Raksases who dwell among the 
Fathers.’ In bothcases the evil spirits must be deemed to be such as naturally 
consort with the spirits of the dead. In yet another passage of the Atharva- 
veda ® some kind of demon which infests the cowstall and the house is addressed 
with the words ‘ whether ye be from the field or sent by men or be children of 
the Dasyus ’, and the last of these conceptions suggests that the demons are 
conceived as being possibly the souls of the hostile Dasyu. Clearer evidence 
than this we really could not expect to find: for once the idea of hostile 
spirits generally was conceived it would be constantly and readily extended. 
There can be hardly any better example of this than the case of the Asuras : 
they are not in origin, as we have seen, enemies of the gods at all, but the 
Brahmana literature with monotonous regularity presents us with the 
picture of the gods and the Asuras being in conflict : the concept of the group 
of Asuras? is thus in the main due to the creative activity of the religious 
consciousness of the priests. Older than this group is that of the Raksases, 
who become, after the invention of the concept of the Asuras, more specifically 
the enemies of men, but who are also enemies of the gods themselves. 

In regard to a third group of evil spirits, the Picacas, it has been suggested 
by Sir G. Grierson § that they reflect human enemies, a race of cannibals, of 
whom traditions prevail throughout the medieval period of India, and whose 
language was the Paicaci of the north-west. In principle it is perfectly 
possible that human enemies may be counted among demons, as well as the 
souls of human enemies, and it may be noted that the Brahmana ® tradition 
which opposes the Asuras to the gods, and the Raksases to men, also opposes 
the Picacas to the Fathers, from which it might be deduced that they were in 


* Monier Williams, Brahmanism’, p. 239; 7 As enemies of men they occur in AV. 

Arbman, Rudra, pp. 156 ff. viii. 6.5; Kaue. Ixxxvii, 16; Ixxxviii.1. 
2 Ind. Stud. xv. 3538. 8 ZDMG. Ivi. 68 ff. Cf. for the Raksases, 
° Feer, Avaddna Cataka, p. 491. Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 426; for 
SApDSaisjoe LlS snCBaxtvetedo4, ob. both, Ved. Myth., p. 185. Cf. Macdonell 
® AV. xviii. 2. 28 ; Kauc. lxxxvii. 16. and Keith, Vedic Indea, i. 5338. 


§ ii. 14.5: the sense of Ksetriyais obscure. ° TS. ii. 4.1.1. 


74 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


large measure deemed to be souls of the hostile dead. Nor need we doubt that 
some of the demons who are defeated by the gods were mere mortal men, 
the enemies of the singers, for there is no such difficulty in accepting the view 
that a living man can be deemed an evil spirit as in believing that he can 
be deemed a god. The rarity of the word Picaca in the earliest literature is 
also to be noted, but on the whole it is more probable that the term was 
in origin applied to demons as spirits, not to an actual tribe of men, whence. 
it came to have its demoniac sense, which is certain in the only instance of its 
use in the Rigveda. 

It is clear that the relations between the two species of divinities, the gods 
of nature, especially the lesser deities, and the spirits of animistic belief, must 
have been close in the extreme, and that there may have been a tendency for 
the latter sphere to intrude on the former, especially with the development of 
the belief in the transmigration of the soul, the origin of which we will have 
cause to consider later. Thus in the Petavatthu 2 the spirit resident in a tree 
declares that it is not a god nor a Gandharva nor Indra, breaker of cities, but 
a dead man from Beruva, and the same text * places on the same basis the 
souls of the dead and the deity of a spot, clearly suggesting that the two 
are closely akin. These passages cannot safely be used with Oldenberg *# 
in support of the derivation of spirits from the souls of the dead: the spirit 
in the tree in more primitive thought must surely have been, as the Vedic 
evidence proves, a tree spirit, and the genius loci was not, we may be sure, 
primitively merely the soul of a dead man. 

The demoniac spirits are naturally conceived in human form, a fact which 
is in harmony with their origin from the souls of the dead, but which would not 
in itself establish that origin. But they are also figured as with animal shapes,? 
and, unlike the great gods whose forms are normal, they are regarded often as 
not merely animal, but of utter and hideous deformity. Or again in some cases 
they are conceived as a mixture of the human and the animal forms. 

In a wide sense the term animism, which here has been employed to cover 
only the beliefs which are founded on the regard had for the souls of the dead, 
is employed to cover all cases of belief in spirits : thus the anthropomorphic 
gods are styled a product of animism, and abstract deities are derived from 
the same conception. The question is in the main one of terminology: by 
Herbert Spencer the term animism covers cases which we have classed as 
animatism, where personality is assumed without any definite theory of 
spirit. But it is by no means certain that we are to consider animism as the 
normal procedure by which we pass from animatism to anthropomorphism, 


cope yn ba Rate Cook (JHS. xiv. 81 ff.) in Minoan 

TRE UP religion is in fact due to a grave error 

Shien Ls in taking fantastic representations for 

* Rel. des Veda’, pp. 59, 60. serious figures (Evans, Ann. Brit. School, 

* Cf. for Babylon Farnell, Greece and Baby- 1900-1, p. 30; JHS. xxi. 169 ; Hogarth, 
lon, pp. 53-5. He (p. 74) points out that JHS., xxii. 92). 


€ totemism and theriolatry found by 


Chap. 5] Animism and the Spirits of the Dead 75 


if we are to consider animism as essentially connected with the souls of the 
dead. We cannot say that belief in the existence and nature of the soul was 
produced by the observation of the phenomena of death only: the dream 
on which Tylor laid stress, or the trance, to which Lang ! attached importance 
in connexion with the power of foresight, are sources from which the view of 
the existence of the spirit could be derived, apart altogether from the pheno- 
mena of death, and Dr. Marett ? holds that in the conception of the souls of 
the dead an additional element of the supernatural was added by the feeling 
of horror and surprise felt by the savage in the presence of a dead body. 
It is, therefore, perfectly legitimate and natural to hold that the transition 
from animatism to anthropomorphism was due to the development of the 
conception of spirit as connected with the living and not as connected with the 
dead. Hence the use of the term animism in this connexion is scarcely 
desirable, though almost inevitable.’ 


$4. The term Deva 


The word Deva undoubtedly denotes a being connected with the heaven, 
and there can be doubt only regarding the precise sense which had been 
developed during the Aryan period when the word was common to the Indians 
and the Iranians to be. Such evidence as there is suggests that the term had 
already come to be applied generically as a term for the gods of all kinds, 
though this must remain doubtful. What is clear is that in the use of the 
Rigveda the word has essentially this sense; the Devas stand out against 
the demons whether Dasas, Dasyus, or Raksases, while the Brahmanas show 
the term Asura degraded from its old higher sense and opposed to Deva.! 
The generic sense of Deva is revealed in the negative Adeva which is opposed 
to Deva and is used of the demon Vrtra.® So also we have the terms miradeva 
used of those who had roots as their gods, and ¢gienadeva of those who were 
phallus worshippers.® It is, therefore, clear that the connexion with the 
heaven had long been lost. That the term Devas when used in the Rigveda 
and other Vedic literature normally denotes the narrow circle of the sky gods, 
and that the term Vicve Devas applies to the gods as a whole, in opposition to 
this narrower group, is a hypothesis 7 wholly without plausibility or support. 
It is absurd to suggest that when gods are opposed to demons the sky gods 
alone are meant, still more absurd to find them alone designated when gods, 


* Making of Religion (1898). recognizes. Reville (Hist. des Rel. ii. 

* Threshold of Religion, pp. 25, 26. 237) distinguishes naturism and ani- 

% Helm (Altgerm. Rel. i. 18, 14) adopts the mism; cf. Lang, Making of Religion, 
term as denoting the recognition of pp. 291 f. See above, p. 42, n. 3. 
natural forces as alive and ensouled as * Cf. Macdonell, Ved. Myth., pp. 156 ff. ; 
opposed to manism, which derives Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, pp. 160 ff. 


worship of these forces from the wor- °* RV. vi. 22.11; iii. 32. 6. 
ship of the dead, naturalism indicating °* RV. vii. 21.5; x. 99. 3. 
the view that the appearancesin nature 7 Arbman, Rudra, p. 154. 
are identic with the powers man 


76 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part IL 


fathers, and men are discriminated, and in the Grhya ritual when a sacrifice 
to the gods and one to Bhitas is found, the two classes, as the enumerations of 
the Siitras prove, do not correspond in the slightest degree to a distinction 
between heavenly gods and others. 

Did Deva ever include demons in Vedic usage ? It has been suggested ? 
that the popular religion of the time used the word widely to cover demons as 
well as gods, while the priests developed the special use as heavenly gods, or— 
as it should rather be put—restored to the term its primitive denotation. The 
answer cannot be given in the affirmative with any certainty ; that gods may 
be hostile on occasion is recognized, and thus gods that disturb the sacrifice * 
may be real gods, and, if the Atharvaveda * gives a conjuration against Devas, 
we cannot assume that these were demons, and not possibly hostile gods, 
Gandharvas or serpents. Still less possible is it to regard as a demon a god 
who sends disease,® and the Yajurveda ® certainly does not refer to a class of 
demons as being gods, but explains that Beings is a generic term applying to 
deities. The term Devajana is used of the serpents ? who are certainly divine, 
and it has no demoniac sense, but naturally enough we come across cases where 
the term is extended beyond the strict limit of deities, so that the Raksases 
may figure as Devajana.§ But there is no hint that this is a normal usage, 
or that Deva applied to anything demoniac save incidentally. The Devajanas 
who are invoked with Yama and Carva ® are divine, not demon hosts, like the 
Raksases, and, when in the epic !® we hear of the Raksasi who became the 
the house deity (grhadevi) of the king, we are not to imagine that the term 
house deity really means house demon ; the Raksasi, as the tale shows, took 
the place of a beneficent house spirit. 3 

Naturally enough, we find the term Deva expanding in use with the 
development of religion and the spread of the doctrine of transmigration which 
ultimately allows of no vital difference between gods and demons, so that the 
epic" can talk of the gods beginning with Brahman and ending with Picacas ; 
but here again it is idle to antedate and to read into Vedic times an obscura- 
tion of sense which was a natural later development. To attribute to the 
Vedic period all that is in the epic is at least as rash as to deny to it everything 
not explicitly found in Vedic texts. 


1 Cf. Chap. 21, § 2. include demons, but are not all demons. 
* Arbman, Rudra, pp. 149 ff. Devajana, opposed to Itarajana in 
STS iodo de GGS. iv. 8. 1, of course, cannot mean 
SoA Vedi. 26, cia Led Or LO. demons or Yaksas as Arbman (p. 99) 
5 MGS. ii. 14. holds. 
BT Via te Babs A Nevinva. Ls 
“CURVY. 1. 2.427, 1 AGS Ail) Onld eee a ie dy. 

AV. vi. 56; xi. 9. 1 MBh. xiii. 14. 4. This is abnormal; 


§ KB. ii. 2; in MGS. I. ¢. the Devas may Hopkins, Epic Myth., p. 3, n. 1. 


CHAPTER 6 
VEDIC COSMOLOGY AND COSMOGONY 


| Tue cosmology of the Veda is simple and natural, and it shows little of the 
‘spirit of the cosmology which is characteristically Indian and which is first 
revealed to us in post-Vedic texts, though the source whence it is derived is 
unknown.! The simplest conception is that of sky and earth, which gives to 
mythology the idea of the dual deity Dyavaprthivi, at first united, then 
parted; but this division is often supplanted by another which distinguishes 
earth on the one hand, the atmosphere or the air on the other, and places 
the heaven above the air. In that case the boundary of the visible sphere is the 
vault (ndka) of the sky. The triple division is the favourite one in the Rigveda, 
which loves triads, and, when it is accepted, the solar phenomena are assigned 
to the heaven, and those of lightning, rain, and wind to the atmosphere, 
while in the simpler twofold division all are ascribed to the sky. The triple 
division is, however, crossed by yet another ; apparently from the use of the 
term the ‘ skies’ or ‘ earth’ to mean the three divisions—as in the case of 
pttarau, ‘fathers’, used for parents, there grew up the idea that there were 
three divisions of each of the main divisions. If the simpler dichotomy were 
kept, then the number of six divisions was arrived at. A further complication 
is introduced by the addition of the vault of the sky, not as the boundary 
between heaven and air, but as a separate entity ; but this view is isolated 
and unimportant. 

The heaven is essentially the abode of the gods, the Fathers, who are 
also especially connected with the moon * where Yama, first of mortals, lives 
in hare shape, and the Soma, and when three divisions of heaven are con- 
ceived they are said to abide in the third and highest of them all. The con- 
stant endeavour to refine is reflected in phrases such as the ridge of the vault, 
or the summit of the vault, in place of the simple phrase, the vault, and even 
the third ridge in the luminous space of heaven is mentioned. When the sky 
and earth are conceived as including the whole universe, they are compared to 
two bowls turned towards each other : a different but allied conception is that 
they are the two wheels at the end of the axle of a chariot. From the heaven to 
the earth is a distance which no bird can fly, the Rigveda® declares; but the 


> See W. Kirfel, Die Kosmographie der Inder Kosmogonie des Rigveda (1908) ; ERE. 
(Bonn, 1920); Lukas, Die Grund- iv. 155-61. 
begriffe in den Kosmogonien der alten * JB.i. 28; cf. below, Chap. 23, § 2. 
Volker, pp. 65ff.; Geldner, Zur ? i. 155. 5. 


78 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part IL 


Atharvaveda ! states that the two wings of the sun bird flying to heaven are 
a thousand days’ journey apart, and the number is repeated by the Aitareya 
Brahmana,? which fixes the distance as a thousand days’ journey of a horse, 
while the affection of the priest for cows results in the truly remarkable view 
of the Paficavinca Brahmana?® that the true measure of distance is that 
afforded by placing 1,000 cows on the top of one another. 

The atmosphere is described sometimes as watery or dark: it is most 
often conceived of as divided into the upper or heavenly and the lower or 
earthly region, but the threefold division is also found. In that case, however, 
there is confusion with the heavenly region: the third of the spaces is declared 
to be the place where are the waters, the Soma, and the birthplace of the 
celestial Agni, and again Visnu is placed there: a similar confusion of the upper 
one of the regions, when but two are reckoned, with the heaven which is 
properly above it, can be noted. The presence of the waters of the sky in 
the air leads to its being conceived as an ocean, while from a different point 
of view the clouds are regarded as mountains, and the conception of seven 
rivers is transferred bodily from its original home on earth to the upper 
regions. 

The position of the different sub-divisions of the air appears to lie above 
the earth, though it has been suggested that the view was held that there was 
air above and below the earth,* thus explaining the appearance and dis- 
appearance of the sun. No passage of the Rigveda proves this suggestion: if 
the sun, as Savitr, is said to go round night on both sides,* this expression need 
mean, and probably does mean, nothing more than that night is enclosed 
between the two bounds of sunrise and sunset. On the other hand, there is one 
passage at least where the presence of the whole of the air above the earth is 
clearly asserted. Moreover, a passage in the Aitareya Brahmana’ suggests 
that the view taken of the motion of the sun was that, after it had travelled 
across the sky with light blazing upon the earth, during the period of the 
night it returned back by the same way as it had come, but with its light 
turned away from the earth. With this it is in perfect harmony if the Rigveda ® 
declares once that the light which the steeds of the sun bear is sometimes 
bright and sometimes dark, or the other statement ° that the rajas, which 
accompanies the sun to the east, is different from the light which rises with the 
sun. Elsewhere? the question is raised, but not answered, Where in the day- 
time are the stars ? 

The earth is described as the great, the extended, even the boundless : 
no trace appears of the theory that the earth is bounded by an ocean, but in 


2 Sete Py ey BV. Ole Se 

SEAT ens Ls bers GI Jos 

* xvi. 8.6; cf. xxi. 1.9; Hopkins, Trans. 7 iii. 44.4; Speyer, JRAS. 1906, pp. 728 ff. 
Conn. Acad. xv. 31, n. 2. Soi oetoy 


* Zimmer, Altind. Leben, pp. 357-9. Con- ° x. 37. 3. 
trast A. C. Das, Rig-Vedic India, i. ° i. 24. 18. 
509 f. 


Chap. 6] Vedic Cosmology and Cosmogony 79 


the Rigveda! its shape is compared to that of a wheel, and the Catapatha 
Brahmana ? directly calls it circular, a conception which, however, is varied in 
another view taken by the Rigveda of the heaven and the earth as bowls 
turned towards each other. The Rigveda reckons four points of the compass, 
or occasionally five, where the centre, the place of the speaker, is the fifth : 
the Atharvaveda adds the zenith as the sixth and sometimes also a seventh,® 
an idea which may be found in’the seven regions and seven places of earth 
mentioned in the Rigveda. The predilection of the Rigveda for the number 
seven is already marked, and there is no ground for the view that it is 
borrowed from Babylon. 

It is of importance for Vedic mythology that the knowledge of the 
heavenly bodies displayed is the most meagre possible. The sun and the moon 
are of course known, but there is no proof of the worship of any other con- 
stellation in the Rigveda, and the rudimentary knowledge of even the divisions 
of time is seen in the fact that a year of 360 days and 12 months is, apart from 
the occasional mention of a 10-month year of gestation, the only year clearly 
known to the whole of the Vedic literature prior to the later Stittras. That the 
year of 12 months, which seems to have been a rough adaptation to the solar 
year of the synodic month of between 29 and 80 days, was not a perfect year 
seems, however, to have been recognized, for the Rigveda already contains the 
mention of a thirteenth supplementary month which must, we may assume, 
have been intercalated periodically, but there is no evidence worth serious 
consideration for the view that the Vedic period knew a period of five years as 
a unit for intercalation.4 The planets are not known to the Rigveda, nor 
apparently to any Vedic text which can claim to be early : the identification of 
Brhaspati with the planet Jupiter which has been accepted for the Rigveda 
by so high an authority as Thibaut ° is clearly untenable, and in the absence 
of the slightest evidence that the planets were known, it is wholly inadmissible 
to seek to interpret the number 34 which occurs in a Rigvedic riddle ® as 
denoting the sun and moon, the five planets, and the twenty-seven Naksatras. 
The Naksatras themselves are recognized in the Yajurveda Samhitas and in 
a late passage of the Atharvaveda as 27 or 28, but, as we have seen, they seem 
wholly unknown at any rate in the main body of the Rigveda, the only clear 
references occurring in a very late hymn.’ They mark the nightly stations of 
the periodic month, and reference has already been made to the uncertainty 
of their origin and the possibility that they are borrowed from some Semitic 


1 x. 89. 4. sees in Soma’s thirty-three wives 
* Weber, Ind. Stud. ix. 358 ff. (TS. ii. 3. 5, 1) the Naksatras, planets, 
5’ Bloomfield, AJP. xii. 432. and sun, butimplausibly. Ifthey were 
* Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Indez, ii. 162, so well known as to be understood in 

412, 413. such references, why are they never 
5 Astronomie, p.6. See Keith, JRAS. 1911, mentioned distinctly ? The pole star, 

pp. 794-800. Dhruva, appears in the Grhya Sitras 
® i. 164. See also Oldenberg’s notes on RV. only. Cf. below, Chap. 11, § 10. 


i. 105.16; x. 55. 33; Weltanschauung 7 x. 85. 
der Brahmanatexte, p. 36, n. 1, where he 


a 


80 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


source. A similar hypothesis is, of course, as has already been pointed out, 
possible as regards the Vedic year, which is of the same length as that of 
Babylon, but for this suggestion there seems no solid ground whatever : 
traces of a sexagesimal form of reckoning which have been seen in Gothic and 
more faintly in Latin and Greek and assigned to a Babylonian origin cannot 
be found in India.t_ Moreover, if Babylon has been able to influence early 
India in any effective degree, it would have been natural that some trace of 
astral mythology should have been discoverable in India, and this is certainly 
not the case. 

No simple or consistent view is expressed as to the origin of the world. 
In one view the world is a thing which has been measured out and established 
by the gods: Indra measures out the six regions, makes the wide earth and 
the high heaven, but the feat is attributed to other gods such as Tvastr, 


‘or Varuna, or Visnu, while the sun is made out to be the instrument used in the 
‘measuring. The stretching out of the earth is similarly attributed to Indra, 


Agni, the Maruts, and other gods, and, by another metaphor, the wood whence 
the house of the world was built is mentioned. Heavenand earth are supported 
by posts, but the air is rafterless and its steadfast condition raises wonder : 
again the air is placed in the doorway of heaven. Foundations are mentioned, 
Savitr makes fast the earth with bonds, Visnu with pegs, and Brhaspati 
supports the ends. In the myth of the one-footed goat Oldenberg ? has seen 
the conception of a goat which holds apart sky and earth, but this view is 
hardly likely, and there is no trace of any other similitude in Vedic religion 
to the legend of Atlas or Tantalos. 

In other passages the relation of parentage * is prominent, and this idea 
has the most varied forms. What is prior in time is the parent of the sub- 
sequent phenomenon: thus the Dawn is born of night, though she is also her 
greater sister, and yet generates the sun, and again the sacrifices of the 
Fathers are said to produce the Dawns, since they take place before the 
appearance of dawn. Spatial relations are similarly enough to explain 
paternity : the quiver is the father of the arrows, the steeds of the sun are 
the daughters of the car: the parent par excellence is Dyaus, and earth also 
is the mother of the many things she bears. Sky and earth too are universal 
parents : the sky fertilizes the earth, and again both produce life in the world, 
the one by the gift of rain, the other through providing food. But the parent- 
hood of sky and earth leads to one of the contrasts in which the Vedic poet 
delights : the gods, as we have seen, constantly are represented by the seers 
as measuring out the sky and the earth, and thus the paradox arises that they 


' Hirt, Die Indogermanen, pp. 535, 5386; * Rel. des Veda’, p.70. See below, Chap. 9, 


Feist, Kultur der Indogermanen, pp. § 5. 

490 ff.; J. Schmidt, Die Urheimat der * This is earlier than the idea of letting go 
Indo-Germanen (Abh. Berl. Akad. (srj), which is prominent in the Upani- 
1890) ; von Schroeder, Arische Religion, sads (Oldenberg, Die Lehre der Upani- 
i, 225, 428; Carnoy, JAOS. xxxvi. shaden, pp. 82 ff.). 


300 ff. 


Chap. 6] Vedic Cosmology and Cosmogony 81 
produce their own parents, and it can be said of Indra that from his own body 
he produced his father and his mother. Agni, again, is the child of the waters, 
which contain the fire of lightning, and the rain cloud is the mother of the 
lightning and of the waters. In another application the chief of a group is 
its father, Vayu of the storm gods, Rudra of the Rudras or Maruts, Sarasvati 
of rivers, Soma of plants. Or again the quality in which a deity is pre- 
eminent is made to be his father: the gods are sons of immortality as well as 
of skill, Agni is son of strength or force, Indra son of truth, and also of might 
(cavas), whence his mother bears the name Cavasi, mighty. Piisan is son of 
setting free, Mitra and Varuna sons of great might. It is possible 1 that the 
goddess Aditi is no more than an example of a figure born of a misunderstand- 
ing of this usage, and it is certain that in the later religion, from the Jaiminiya 
Brahmana at least, the wife of Indra, Caci, is merely a misunderstanding of 
the epithet ¢acipati, ‘ lord of strength ’, applied to that god. 

In the late parts of the Rigveda and in the subsequent literature more 
serious attempts are made to solve the riddle of the production of the world, 
and Prajapati appears as the creator god, though beside him there usually 
is to be found a primordial matter upon which he works. These ideas, how- 
ever, belong not to the religion so much as to the philosophy of the Veda, and 
will more appropriately be treated later. One hymn,? the famous Purusa- 
sikta, ‘ hymn of man’, may contain in its very elaborate sacerdotal form 
traces of an early idea. It is there told how the world was produced by the 
gods from the sacrifice of a primeval giant: his head became the sky, his 
navel the air, and his feet the earth. The moon sprang from his mind, the 
sun from his eyes, Indra and Agni from his mouth, the wind from his breath, 
the four castes from his mouth, arms, thighs, and feet in order of dignity. , 
The hymn itself is frankly pantheistic, declaring that Purusa is all that is, » 
that has been, and that shall be, and the mere precision by which the four | 
castes are equated with the appropriate parts of the giant is clear proof that | 
the idea as found in the hymn has been completely worked over in the interest 
of the priests. But the recurrence of the exception in Norse mythology is an 
indication, though not a proof, that the idea may be also popular and old. 
In the Brahmanas Purusa takes naturally upon himself the character of 
Prajapati? 

1 Below, Part II, Chap. 12, § 5. 
2 RV.x.90. Fora quasi parallel in Babylon 


Vedic India, i. 226 ff. for further guesses. 
Rhys (Celtic Heathendom, pp. 111 ff., 


(Marduk and Tiamat), cf. Farnell, 
Greece and Babylon, p. 181. Carnoy 
(JAOS. xxxvi. 320) suggests Babylonian 
influence, and Tilak (Bhandarkar Comm. 
Vol., pp. 82 ff.) argues that in AV. v. 
18. 6 taimdta is Tiamat, Indra apsujit 
(RV. viii. 18. 2; 36.15 ix. 106. 3) is 
a parallel to Marduk’s victory over 
Apsu, chaos (originally borrowed by 
Babylon), &c.; cf. A. C. Das, Rig- 
6 [x.0.s. 31] 


561 ff.) tries to reconstruct an Indo- 
European myth (Ouranos’s mutilation). 


5 In RV. x. 72 we may have the idea of 


creation by a primitive Yogin, Uttana- 
pad; Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, p. 279 ; 
Hamer, Die Anfdnge der Yogapraxis 
im alten Indien, pp. 28 ff. Possibly 
old is the idea of the throwing up of the 
earth by a primeval boar; CB. xiv. 1. 
2.11, and a cosmic tortoise is conceived 


82 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


Neither in the philosophical hymns nor in the mythology are the gods 
/ treated as existing from all eternity to all eternity. The philosophy of the 
_ Veda makes them born after the creation of the world, or derives their 
_ being from the non-existent or the element of water, while the mythology 
_ finds in them most often the children of sky and earth. In one late hymn ? 
the gods are born from Aditi, from the waters, and from the earth, doubtless in 
accordance with the threefold division of the Universe. Aditi is the parent 
of the Adityas, the Dawn is mother of all, and the function of paternity is 
assigned to Soma and Brahmanaspati. Hence there are recognized different 
generations of the gods, the older and the younger, and the Atharvaveda ? 
speaks of ten gods as being before the rest, but the passage is not mythological 
and cannot support a theory ® that originally the Vedic Indians had ten great 
gods, whence, by inclusive reckoning and multiplication by the favourite 
number 8, the 33 of the normal reckoning are attained. Nor in origin were the 
gods immortal: they are said in the Rigveda to have been given this gift by 
Savitr* or by Agni,® or to have attained it by drinking the Soma.® Indra is 
said to have attained it by austerity.’ The later literature agrees : the gods 
are expressly asserted to have been originally mortal, and this fact is asserted 
individually of such deities as Indra, Agni, and even Prajapati. The Atharva- 
veda ® ascribes their attaining immortality to Rohita, or to their continence 
and austerity, while the prevailing view in the Brahmanas ascribes their 
success to some performance of a ritual act in an accurate manner. That the 
immortality thus won was not, as in post-Vedic literature, merely for the 
space of a cosmic age may be regarded as certain, since the conception of the 
four ages of the world (Krta, Tretaé, Dvapara, and Kali) is wholly unknown ® 
to the Vedic literature and first makes its appearance in the epic and in the 
law-book of Manu. 

Like the gods, men came into being by creation : seemingly they must be 
considered as included among the offspring of the universal parents, sky and 
earth. But there are other versions of their parentage : one account makes 
them the offspring of Manu, son of Vivasvant, the first of sacrificers and the 
first of men.!° Another and famous version makes them sprung from Yama, 


as finding the earth in the ocean, JB.iii. ° Jacobi (GGA. 1895, p. 210) and Garbe 


272 (Aktpara Kacyapa; cf. PB. xv. (Sadmkhya und Yoga, p. 16) see the 
5.30; CB. vii. 5.1. 5). germ of the cosmic ages in AV. x. 8. 89, 
1 RV. x. 68. 2. 40, but this is clearly wrong ; cf. Garbe, 
eo aby oy HEN Sdmkhya-Philosophie?, pp. 285f. For 
* Hopkins, Oriental Studies, pp. 153, 154; the alleged occurrence of the four ages 
see Keith, JRAS. 1916, pp. 353, 354. in the AB., see Macdonell and Keith, 
‘ RV. iv. 54, 2. Vedic Index, ii.193. Cf. ERE. i. 200 ff. ; 
5 RV. vi. 7. 4. Keith, Rigveda Brdhmanas, p. 302. 
6 RV. ix. 106. 8. Certain mysterious Kalis occur as 
7 RV. x. 167. 1. Gandharvas in JB.i. 154, and as friends 
* xi. 5.19; iv.11.6. So AB. iii. 4 (of Agni) ; of the (cosmic) tortoise, Akipara, in 
viii. 14. 4 (Indra); (CB. x. 1. 3. 1 (of JB. iii. 272. 


Prajapati) ; 4. 3. 3 (all the gods). ORV 15. 163.07. 


Chap. 6] Vedic Cosmology and Cosmogony 83 


Vivasvant’s son, and his sister Yami, a legend of which the Avesta preserves 
a record also. Yet in another passage ? the Gandharva and the heavenly 
maiden are described as the parents of the twins, in place, we must assume, of 
Vivasvant. Agni is father of men and in particular the Angirases claim descent 
from him, and other families likewise boast of origin from individual gods : 
Vasistha claims birth from Mitra and Varuna jointly through their love for 
the nymph Urvaci.* In the Purusasikta, again, quite a different account is 
found in the derivation of the four castes as wholes from the offering of Purusa 
by the gods. Like the gods too, man was not originally immortal, but, when 
the gods learned by sacrifice the path to immortality, men would have followed 
it, had not it been ordained to please the lord of death that men should be 
forbidden immortality save through laying aside their own bodies.* To this 
differentiation of gods from men corresponds the fact also recorded by a 
Brahmana that the gods at one time used to come in their bodily presence 
among men, but had ceased to do so.°® 

In the physical world there rules a regular order, Rta, which is observed 
repeatedly, and which is clearly an inheritance from the Indo-Iranian period, 
since the term ASa (Urta) is found in the Avesta, and has there the same triple 
sense as in Vedic India, the physical order of the universe, the due order of the 
sacrifice, and the moral law in the world. We are doubtless justified in seeing 
in the word Arta as it appears in the names recorded in the Tell-el-Amarna 
correspondence the same word, and in inferring that the sense was somewhat 
the same at that early period about 1400 B.c.® The identity of the Vedic and 
Avestan expressions is proved beyond possibility of doubt by the expression 
‘ spring of Rta ’, which is verbally identical in the Avesta 7 and the Rigveda. 
The Dawns arise in the morning according to the Rta, the Fathers have placed 
the sun in the heaven according to the Rta; the sun is the bright countenance 
of the Rta, and the darkness of the eclipse is contrary to law, Vrata. The year 
is the wheel of Rta with twelve spokes. The red raw milk, the product of the 
white uncooked cow, is the Rta of the cow under the guidance of the Rta. 
Agni, the fire, which, hidden in the waters and the plants, is produced for man 
from out the kindling sticks, becomes the shoot of Rta, born in the Rta. The 
streams flow in obedience to the law of Rta. From the physical it is an easy 
step to the conception of the Rta not merely in the moral world, of which we 
shall have cause to speak later,? but also in the sphere of the sacrifice: the 
1 RY. x. 103 JAOS. xxxvi. 315. pp. 7 ff.; Oldenberg, GN. 1915, pp. 
POR Ve xls 167 ff. ; von Schroeder, Arische Religion, 
SRV .vilvioode Las i. 348 ff., who insists that Rta is 
Gs }oe eZ vt tu essentially Varuna’s possession. Carnoy 
LG ike nhs di, PSs UE pee giabira eR aed sp (JAOS. xxxvi. 307) suggests Babylonian 

Xv. 5. 24. influence. 


6 Bloomfield, Religion of the Veda, p. 12, 7 Yasna,x.4; RV. ii. 28. 5. 
who places the evidence about 1600 * Derivation from ar-, ‘fit’ (dram, dpapioxw, 


B.C., which is too early; Hall, Anc. 
Hist. of Near East, pp. 260 ff. Cf. 
Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, 


6* 


ars), or er-, “move’, is possible. Cf. 
Giintert, Der arische Weltkénig, pp. 
141 ff. ® See below, Chap. 16. 


84 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


conception of Agni as performing his functions of carrying the offerings to the 
gods, or bringing the gods to the offerings, under the control and guidance of 
the holy power of order is at once natural and obvious. The stress laid on the 
conception of the Rta in the sphere of the sacrifice which furthers it and which 
it pervades ! seems certainly to be no more than a reflex of its importance at 
once in the physical and the moral sphere. 

As a deity, however, the Rta does not obtain an established rank. The 
occurrence of such phrases as the idea of the Dawns coming forth from the 
place of the Rta, or of the place of sacrifice as the seat of the Rta, or of the 
charioteer or the wheel or the steeds or the vehicle or the ship of the Rta,? 
shows nothing more than the natural concreteness of expression of the Vedic 
age: there is no prayer to it, and in all the mass of deities invoked in the cult 
the Rta is not included. The deities, with whom the working of law in nature 
and in moral life was connected, were above all Varuna and Mitra, less often 
Agni and Savitr; the Dawns obey not only the Rta, but also the law of Varuna: 
the stars in the sky disappear by day by the rule of Varuna. In the moral 
sphere the gods naturally are more prominent than the paler figure of the Rta; 
but in the famous hymn ? in which Yami, the sister of the first man, urges him 
to commit incest with her in order to produce the race of men, Yama, in 
rejecting her plea, appeals not merely to the principle of the Rta, but to the 
ordinances of Mitra and Varuna. Hence we have not merely cases in which the 
Rta appears as an independent authority,* but also instances where it is 
treated as the possession of some god. The streams go on their way according 
to the Rta of Varuna ; heaven and earth further the Rta of Mitra, and the two 
gods appear as the lords of the Rta, the right. Yet on the other hand they 
are reduced to a lesser grade in that they appear also as the charioteers of the 
Rta, the furtherers of the Rta, the guardians of the Rta, something which 
therefore exists apart from them. But the connexion of the gods and of 
Varuna with the Rta is always close and marked : so it is said of Agni who has 
some connexions also, as the god of the sacrificial order par excellence,’ 
‘ Thou dost become Varuna, when thou strivest for the Rta.’ No other god 
has any really constant connexion with it save the pair, Mitra and Varuna, 


Prajapati appears as of bi-sexual 
nature—later Civa is of course some- 
times androgynous. But the evidence 
is wholly unable to bear out this 
hypothesis; see Keith, JRAS. 1913, 
pp. 412-17; below, Appendix B. 

‘ So Rta is said to have ordinances (vrata) 
followed by the gods (RV. i. 65. 3); 


1 For prayer and the Rta, see RV. ii. 32.1 ; 
Vill GO. L221 Lo. 26 seek OSs ee athe 
Sadas of Rta, iii. 7.2; x. 111.2; the 
Vedi, TS. i. 1.9.83 cf. RV. vi. 15. 14; 
vii. 39. 1. 

SOR Y St-5 LGA; ellis 10.06.16 s) vie vero seawl Ll. 
G2 1x, 89.2 eax On an 

* RV. x. 10. With this idea may be com- 


pared the suggestion of Hertel (VOJ. 
xxv. 135 ff.) that in Puriiravas, son of 
Ida or Ida, we have the relic of tracing 
the origin of man to a bi-sexual being, 
a view which he supports by the use of 
passages where in the Brahmanas 


Soma fiows under the law (dharman) of 
Rta (RV. ix. 7.1); Mitra and Varuna 
rule by law and Rta (RV. v. 63. 7). 
Cf. RV.i.105.6; viii. 100. 4; ix. 86. 32. 


PAONE 2 ERCP 


Chap. 6] Vedic Cosmology and Cosmogony 85 


and in the case of some gods like Indra, whose greatness makes them neces- 
sarily come into some degree of contact with the Rta, the superficiality of 
the connexion is obvious. 

It is characteristic of the nature of the Vedic gods that the various ideas 
regarding the relation of the Rta and the gods remain side by side without 
feeling of contradiction or possible collision. The fascinating relation of 
Moira and the gods, especially Zeus, of the world of Homer is not to be 
expected, as it certainly is not found in the religion of the Veda.? 


' Bergaigne, Rel. Véd. iii, 220 ff. 
* For Hertel’s views as to the Indo-Iranian conception of the heaven, see Appendix C, 


CHAPTER 7 
THE INTERRELATION OF THE GODS 


THE Rigveda recognizes the number of the gods as 33, a figure 
given also in the Iranian tradition, and these it further divides into three 
groups of 11, connected with the heaven, the earth, and the waters of the air: 
more often the connexion of the gods with these three regions is mentioned 
without any precise statement of number. Of this 33 no explanation 
in detail can be gathered from the Rigveda: it is certain that it is not 
exhaustive, for other gods are mentioned in addition to the 33. The 
absence of any established tradition is shown by the Brahmanas which 
recognize the 33 gods, and agree in making them out to include 8 
Vasus, 11 Rudras, and 12 Adityas, but differ as to the remaining two: 
the Catapatha1 gives either Dyaus and Prthivi, with a thirty-fourth in 
Prajapati, or Indra and Prajapati, while the Aitareya ? adds Prajapati and 
the Vasat call, a technical introduction from the sacrifice which is manifestly 
not primitive.* It is not unnatural, therefore, that Hopkins should have 
sought to find the origin of the number in an older 10, but there is, as we have 
seen, no tolerable evidence in tradition of an older set of ten gods either in 
India or in any other Indo-European religion. 

The triple division is adopted by Yaska in his Nirukta,* where he divides 
the gods into those whose place is the earth, those whose place is the atmo- 
sphere, and those whose place is the heaven, and he records that in the opinion 
of the school of Nairuktas the whole of the deities could be reduced to three, 
Agni on earth, Vayu in the air, or, in place of Vayu, Indra, and Sirya in the 
heaven. The doctrine may have owed its origin to such passages as the 
Rigveda ® verse ‘ May Sirya protect us from heaven, Vata from air, Agni 
from the earthly regions ’, or the declaration of the Maitrayani Samhita * that 
Agni, Vayu, and Sirya are the children of Prajapati, while the presence of 
Indra as a variant for Vayu may be due to his affinity in one aspect to Vayu, 
and still more to the fact that, if a god were to be chosen to represent the 
atmosphere, it was hardly possible without absurdity to omit Indra. It 


POIVSO. Cea eRINOsoeo. as to the number nine; cf. G. Hiising, 

* 1i.18.8. Cf. PB. vi.2.5; TS. iii. 4. 9. 7. Die iranische Uberlieferung und das 

* Von Schroeder (Arische Religion, i. 429) arische System (1909); W. Schultz, 
suggests an original group of nine Mitteil. der Anthropol. Ges. in Wien, 
superior gods of Indo-Iranian unity, xl. 101-50 ; A. Kaegi, Die Newnzahl bei 
Dyaus Pitr, Asura, Varuna, Mitra, den Ostariern (1891). 


Aryaman, Anga, Bhaga, Daksa (Dhatr ‘ vii. 5. 
or Datr), Parjanya; but this is quite ‘° x. 158. 1. 
unproved, and rests on the false views ° iv. 2. 12. 


Chap. 7] The Interrelation of the Gods 87 


should, however, be noted that Yaska does not himself accept the theory of 
the reduction of all the gods of the several spheres to forms of one god only, 
and in the Naighantuka, the text on which his Nirukta comments, the lists of 
gods given are not based on the principle of identity adopted by the Nairuktas. 
Nor can the list be regarded as having any special value or authority, though 
in the main the assignment of the gods to the three spheres is in accordance 
with the indications of the Rigveda itself. Where a god has different activities, 
his name is repeated in more than one sphere: thus Tvastr and Prthivi 
appear in all three divisions, Agni and Usas in the terrestrial and the aerial, 
and Varuna, Yama, and Savitr in the aerial and the celestial. 

The identifications made by the Nairuktas were not unnatural and point 
to a marked similarity prevailing among the great Vedic gods. They are all, 
as we have seen, conceived as anthropomorphic, mention is made in connexion 
with many of them of the head, face, mouth, hair, arms, hands, feet, and other 
members. They wear garments, that of Dawn being marked out by its 
brilliance, and the gods often are represented as wearing coats of mail, and 
bearing weapons such as the bow, the spear, the battle-axe: it is a rare thing 
when one is so specially marked out as is Indra by his constant association 
with the thunderbolt. All the gods too have luminous chariots, and only in 
one or two cases have we mention of any but normal steeds to draw them. 
Piisan is associated with the goat, the A¢vins with birds, the Maruts with 
spotted deer as well as with horses, and Usas has cows as well as horses. 
They live together in the highest heaven, and together they come when 
invoked to the offering strew in their chariots, or, remaining in the heaven, 
they receive the oblations which are brought to them by the god Agni, the 
messenger between men and the gods. Their food is the same, milk, butter, 
barley, oxen, goats, and sheep, though some gods have special predilections 
for food; so Indra prefers bulls, which are therefore offered to him in 
hecatombs, and Piisan eats mush and has. no teeth. They enjoy together 
the Soma drink, by which they won immortality. Their relations are those 
of peace and friendship: Indra alone breaks the harmony of heaven: he 
shattered the chariot of the Dawn, he even slew his own father, he warred 
against the gods, and an interesting hymn shows to us a dispute between Indra 
and the faithful followers, the Maruts, whom he threatens to slay, until his 
anger is appeased. But, generally speaking, the gods share the same attributes 
of might, light, goodness, and wisdom. 

Further considerations help to diminish the differences which might be 
expected to exist between deities whose natural basis is different. On the 
analogy of the pair of gods, Mitra and Varuna, whose union is in all pro- 
bability Indo-Iranian, were formed other pairs,? in which Indra usually 
formed one member. The attribution to the pair of gods of the feats of either 


1 Part II, Chap. 5, § 1 (a). (viii. 26. 8) has actually the compound 
2 In the Mitanni list Indra and NaSatia word Indra-Nasatya, but the case is 
appear together, and the Rigveda isolated. 


88 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


naturally and inevitably led to the association of one god with feats which 
were not his in the beginning. Again the gods were assimilated in consequence 
of their possessing the same power though exercising it in different forms. 
Thus Agni by the fire repels demons, but Indra performs the same feat with 
the thunderbolt, and the two gods, agreeing in part, come to agree in whole. 
Agni, therefore, is given the thunderbolt of Indra: he is styled slayer of 
Vrtra, he wins the cows and the waters, the sun and the dawns. The task of 
extending the earth and of propping the air and the sky is one which is 
attributed to very varied gods: it can as easily be performed by Varuna as 
by Indra or by Visnu, by the first as the upholder of the physical order of the 
universe, by the second as the great active god, and by Visnu as the strider 
through the worlds. The tendency to syncretism is also increased by the 
close connexion of the elements in nature: thus the water is on the one hand 
divine in itself, but from the waters of the clouds springs forth the fire of the 
lightning, and that fire in its descent to earth enters into the water : the water 
contains, therefore, always an element of fire, and Agni himself is accordingly 
the son of the waters, thus commingling in his nature two very diverse 
elements. But Agni is not merely the fire on earth or the lightning in the air, 
he is also the sun in the sky, and thus Agni is closely and intimately related 
to Sirya. But the sun is placed in the sky or produced or given a path to go 
in by about a dozen different gods. Other gods, again, are essentially akin 
by the reason of their being aspects merely of the same natural phenomenon. 

The result was that the tendency was certainly steadily growing through- 
out the period of the Rigveda to regard the gods as closely related, rather 
than as in Greece to devise from time to time individual characteristics. 
Thus a poet! can say: ‘Thou, at birth, O Agni, art Varuna: when kindled 
thou dost become Mitra; in thee, O son of strength, all gods are centred ; 
to the worshipper thou dost become Indra.’ From this view a further step 
is taken in the express assertion,? which carries us from Vedic religion to the 
beginnings of philosophy, ‘In many ways the priests speak of that which is 
but one; they call it Agni, Yama, Mataricvan ’, or ‘ The bird that is one 
priest and poets with words make into many ’.? The reduction to unity of 
the divine nature carries with it as a consequence the further conception of the 
unity of the whole universe : thus Aditi is declared to be identical with all the 
gods, with men, with all that has been and is to be,* and Prajapati is given 
the same position.® But this is characteristic of the latest stage of the poetry 
of the Rigveda. 

It is a question of some interest to ascertain exactly what was the view of 
the poets in their exaggerated invocations of the minor deities with declara- 
tions of their power which would make them the greatest of gods. Are we 
to suppose that the poet actually for the time being dismissed from his mind 


TRV. Velo. 1, Serv Vic We Seil Ox 
* RV. i. 164. 46. PERRY lexsel 205 
SOR Vi x. day o. 


Chap. 7] The Interrelation of the Gods 89 


the other gods, and as a psychological fact felt his heart go out to the god, to 
whom his hymn was directed, in an outpouring of admiration and belief in 
him as really the supreme deity ? This is the theory which has been called 
Henotheism or Kathenotheism,! and which, invented by Max Miiller, has in 
this form hardly survived criticism. The key to the view of the poets is 
perhaps more surely provided by the fact that in the Atharvaveda ? a late 
poet, celebrating the mystic virtues of Darbha grass for magical purposes, 
attributes to it the properties of having extended the earth and supported 
the sky and the heaven. The idea that a Vedic poet could for a moment even 
shut from his mind the other figures of the pantheon seems incredible : apart 
from the hymns to the All-gods which were frequently used at the sacrifice, 
and in which the various gods find mention in close conjunction, the majority 
of the hymns even of the Rigveda were composed, without doubt, for definite 
use at the Soma ritual, in which a large number of gods found their definite 
allotted places, so that the poet knew precisely for what point in the ritual 
his poem was composed. Moreover, the practice of the invocation of pairs of 
gods or groups of gods was constant, and naive statements 3 like ‘ Agni alone, 
like Varuna, is lord of wealth’ show clearly enough the real value to be put 
upon assertions of unique authority or power. If, therefore, we add to the 
natural tendency of the poet to magnify the god to whom for the moment his 
worship was addressed—just as the panegyrist magnified the king whose 
bounty he was celebrating above all other kings—the indefiniteness of the 
outlines of the Vedic gods, and the constant tendency to confuse the character- 
istic nature of the deities, there is provided a satisfactory explanation of the © 
facts of the Rigveda. For this stage of view the term Henotheism may 
survive, though it cannot be accepted in the precise interpretation given 
to it by its author. 

In the Rigveda this tendency to assimilation, which may be called in some 
degree monotheistic, but with a pronounced tendency to pantheism, practically 
excludes the growth of any real hierarchy among the gods. The Rigveda,?| 
indeed, expressly says of the gods that some are great, some small, some young, 
some old, and there is no reason to doubt that this was a view widely held : 
the mere fact that another poet °® assures the gods that they are none of them 
small or young, but all great, is rather proof of the prevalence of the contrary 
view than an indication that the assurance which he gives was generally 
accepted as correct. Moreover, there is the patent fact that, when all allow- 
ances are made for the nature of the subject-matter, two Vedic deities do 
appear as being of much greater importance than the others, Indra as the great 
ruler, and Varuna as the lord of physical and moral order. In the Avesta, on 
the other hand, Indra is only to be discerned dimly as a demon, and Varuna 


' Max Miiller, Phys. Rel., pp. 180 ff. Class. Stud. in honour of Drisler, 
2 xix. 32. 9. pp. 75 ff. 

* Macdonell, Ved. Myth., p. 17. ai. 275 18; 

4 


Whitney, PAOS. Oct. 1881; Hopkins, * RV. viii. 30. 1. 


90 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


has his counterpart in the glorious and righteous Ahura Mazdah, It is there- 
fore natural enough to imagine that the original great god of the Aryans was 
Varuna and that it was in India that Indra was made up to the stature of 
Varuna, and even overthrew his prominence. In the alternative it has even 
been maintained, as by Jacobi,! that the Avesta did not know Indra at all as 
a god, and that he is really of Indian origin. 

The discovery among the gods of the Mitanni of the names of Indra as well 
as of Mitra and Varuna is on the whole decidedly in favour of the view that 
the Iranians knew of Indra as a god equally with Varuna. If so, then the 
history of the two gods in Iran has been determined by a long development 
culminating in the state of religion preserved in the reforms of Zoroaster, and 
we cannot draw any conclusion from Iran as to the earlier history of the gods. 
In India there is no evidence to show that even in the earliest times known to 
us there was any priority of Varuna over Indra, and the greatness of Indra 
and his close association with the ideals of the Vedic Indian suggest that he was 
from the earliest times of which we have knowledge a great Indian god. The 
same remark, however, applies to Varuna for the whole of the early period of 
the Rigveda, and the practical equality of the two gods for this period seems 
to be established by the very hymn ? which has often been adduced as showing 
the supersession of the older by the younger god. In it Varuna claims for 
himself the kingship, on the ground that all the immortals obey him, that he 
rules over the highest heaven, that he has established the earth, the air, and 
the sky, and has made the waters to flow. Indra replies that he is the irresis- 
tible one, on whom men call in time of conflict, and that the worlds tremble 
when the praise of men and the draughts of Soma have evoked his great 
powers. In the mere argument Indra would seem to have the worse rather 
than the better part, but the end of the hymn asserts that the wife of Puru- 
kutsa honoured both the gods, and received from them in reward the son 
Trasadasyu, who is one of the most famous of the kings of the Rigveda. But 
at the same time it must be admitted that in the later period of the Rigveda 
Varuna’s popularity seems to be declining : the argument from the fact that 
in the tenth book he has no hymn addressed to himself alone, while Indra 
has forty-five, is not conclusive, because the number of hymns addressed 
to Indra even in books ii and iii amounts to forty-five and Varuna has no 
hymr in iii and but one in ii; but it is true that Varuna is comparatively 
seldom mentioned in book x, and, what is far more important, by the time 
of the Atharvaveda he is already reduced to a very inferior position, while 
Indra 1s deliberately placed above all the gods, including Mitra and Varuna.® 


1 JRAS. 1910, pp. 457, 458. here mentioned, but see Giintert, Der 
* RV. iv. 42. The meaning of x. 124, which arische Weltkénig, p. 207. 
is taken by some as showing the decline * xx. 106. Hillebrandt (Ved. Myth., pp. 82, 
of Varuna, is obscure; Oldenberg, 131), while accepting Hoernle and 
Rel. des Veda’, pp. 95 ff. ; Hillebrandt, Grierson’s views of two strata of 
Ved. Myth. iii. 67-71, who distin- immigration, wisely does not connect 


guishes Varuna from the father Asura the two with Indra and Varuna. 


Chap. 7] The Interrelation of the Gods 91 


This shows clearly that the nature of Varuna failed to satisfy the needs of the 
specifically Indian character which must have been developing during the 
period, which divides the earlier parts of the Rigveda from the later, and the 
practical equality of the gods in the middle period of the Rigveda was to be 
decisively upset in favour of Indra. 

The case of Indra and Varuna indicates faintly the existence of different 
standpoints among the tribes which shared in greater or less degree the Vedic 
civilization. That there was uniformity of belief among the tribes it would be 
absurd to expect ; we hear of their struggles, especially of the great battle of 
the ten kings, and we need not assume that accusations of being without gods, 
without sacrifice, without Indra, necessarily always apply to non-Aryan foes. 
It is reasonable also to believe that families of priests had special affections 
for certain deities. What, however, is the fact is that in the Rigveda as we 
have it, it is hard to discover any certain evidence of preferences, tribal or 
otherwise. Hillebrandt’s failure to elicit any secure results of much importance 
illustrates this proposition. The view! that book vi of the Rigveda places the 
Bharadvaja family in Arachosia, while iii and vii show the Vicvamitras and the 
Vasisthas in the Punjab, under Sudas, a descendant of the Divodiasa cele- 
brated by the Bharadvajas, cannot successfully be maintained, and much of 
his evidence for preferences is founded on equally inadequate foundations. 
It is, however, interesting to note? that Tvastr, in whose service the Nestr 
priest stands, has but a slight hold in the Rigveda, while the ceremonial 
rituals in connexion with fertility magic in which this priest engages and his 
connexion with the Sura, not the Soma, suggest that the god was derived from 
a different milieu, not necessarily un-Aryan, from the bulk of the text. Again, 
the Gandharva, normally a friendly creature, is in two hymns of the eighth 
book treated as hostile, while in the Atharvaveda we find a distinctly different 
conception of the Gandharvas.? The connexion of Indra with the Maruts 4 
as his aiders is distinctly conspicuous in book iii, of the Vigvamitra family ; 
in book v the Atris seem rather to treat the Maruts in the guise of priestly 
adorers of the god, while they are on Hillebrandt’s view marked out also by 
preferring to regard Cusna as the chief foe of Indra in lieu of Vrtra. Save for 
one hymn (66) the Bharadvajas of book vi take little note of the Maruts 
or Rudra, the Vasisthas of book vii make little of the Indra legend or the 
Maruts, Vrtra appears normally merely as a generic term for a foe, and Indra 
is united with the Vasus in one place instead of with the Rudras. The Rbhus 
are most prominent in book iv. The Bharadvajas are markedly less interested 
in Varuna than the Vasisthas, as is natural since Vasistha claims descent from 
Mitra and Varuna.® The pale figure of Aryaman is hardly recognized in the 
Family books, especially iii and viii.’ The Vi¢gvamitras are marked by offering 


1 Ved. Myth. i. 85 ff. ‘ Ved. Myth. iii. 312 ff. 
2 Ibid. i. 262, 514; ii. 16. ® Ibid. iii, 185 f. 
2? RV. viii. 1.11; 77.5; Ved. Myth. i. 438 ff. ® Ibid. iii. 68. 


Cf. Chap. 11, § 2. 7 Ibid, iii. 87. 


92 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


food to Indra’s bays,! the Bharadvajas lay stress on the worship of Pisan,? 
the Vasisthas take more note of Visnu than normally. The Grtsamadas of 
book ii and the Bharadvajas seem comparatively indifferent to the Ag¢vins, 
who on the other hand are favoured by the Atris and the Vasisthas.4 The 
latter family seems to have been less addicted to the Soma cult than the 
others, possibly under the influence of devotees of the Sura® from the 
eastern lands, who favoured the cult of the Sura-drinking A¢vins. The Cata- 
patha Brahmana® assures us that Rudra was styled Carva among the eastern 
folk, Bhava among the Bahikas of the west, and in the Pali’ texts we 
have adequate evidence of the contrast between east and west which 
is already attested in the Vedic tradition by the dislike of the man from 
Magadha. 

We must doubtless also see signs of tribal and family differences in the 
multiplication of forms of the same deity ; the sun, for instance, might be 
revered in one place as Sirya, in another Pisan might be held in special 
honour, in yet another Savitr ; Vayu and Vata represent in diverse ways the 
wind, while the Maruts are especially the storm winds; Visnu we may 
suspect of having been the aspect of the sun especially adored by one clan. 
Unfortunately it is difficult to proceed beyond such general speculations in 
view of the available material, in which local and tribal distinctions have been 
largely removed by syncretism. The process has clearly gone far even in the 
Rigveda ; if we reckon in the Atharvaveda and the other Samhitas, we can 
discern clearly further syncretisms in progress, which give us such forms as 
those of Rudra and Visnu in the rank of great gods, and show us new aspects 
of the natures of such deities as Yama, the Maruts, and the Gandharvas. In 
cases such as these we need not see efforts of the priests of the Rigveda to 
elevate crude conceptions or transform deities of the underworld to celestial 
rank,® for it is easier and more plausible to accept the view that we have con- 
tamination, sometimes of divergent Aryan views, sometimes of Aryan and 
un-Aryan conceptions. 

Syncretism is shown not merely in the complex form of the combination 
of different aspects into one deity, but in the union in the ritual of deities 
between whom there is no natural connexion. Thus we have the rather 
forced union of Indra and Varuna ;* the royal consecration appears in our 
sources either as a Varuna rite or the great consecration of Indra, for both 
gods are kings and claim the devotion of the ruling power. Katyayana bids 
the Ksatriya perform the establishment of the sacred fire according to the rule 
of Varuna, the Rajanya according to that of Indra. The treatment of the 


1 Ved. Myth. iii. 214 ff. Rel. des Veda’, pp. 91 ff.; GN. 1915, 
* Ibid. iii. 367. pp. 3783 ff. 

3 Ibid. iii. 347. At Ors 

4 Ibid. iii. 394 ff. Oldenberg, Buddha‘, Excursus I. 

5 


7 
On the contrast of Sura and Soma cf. * e.g. Arbman, Rudra, p. 307. 
Ved. Myth. i. 250, 253, but against ° Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth., pp. 82 f. 
exaggerated views, see Oldenberg, 


Chap. 7] The Interrelation of the Gods 93 


Rbhus is possibly significant in this regard ;1 whatever their origin, they 
had come in considerable degree to be associated with the seasons, Rtus. In 
the ritual we find that the Rbhus are given a share in the Vaicvadeva litany 
at the third pressing of the Soma sacrifice, while in the Grhya ritual ? the 
Rtus appear in connexion with the Astaka offering, and along with the All- 
gods and the Fathers rank as deities of the Astakas. In the Crauta ritual # 
we find that there is care taken to avoid connexion between the Rtus and the 
Rbhus ; where one set appears, the other is omitted, and the Rtus are not 
given full rank as sharers in the oblations; on the contrary, the gods are 
merely asked to drink with them the so-called Rtu cups. It is natural also 
to see syncretism in the arrangement which turns Indra and Agni‘ into the 
deities of the new moon offerings, for to find in Agni here a designation of 
the moon while Indra denotes the sun, the two being united at ‘new moon’, 
i.e. when the moon disappears wholly, is a decided tour de force. Visnu and 
Varuna again are by no means a natural pair. Similarly we find Pisan brought 
into connexion with Indra, while Visnu is made to share in the defeat of Vrtra. 
Pisan is also introduced into the legends connecting the A¢vins and Sirya, 
and Indra is made the guardian of the ordinances of Mitra and Varuna. 
There is throughout the Rigveda no trace of any consistent subordina- 
tion of one god to another. The lack of system in this regard is clearly shown 
by such assertions as those made by both Indra and Varuna that they are 
obeyed by all the gods, and other passages tell us that Varuna and Sirya are 
subject to Indra, that Varuna and the Acvins submit to the power of Visnu, 
who otherwise is of comparatively little moment among the Vedic gods, 
and that Indra, Mitra and Varuna, Aryaman and Rudra cannot resist the 
ordinances of Savitr, who is not, after all, a very important deity. Nor are we 
in a position to estimate more precisely even the comparative importance 
of the great majority of the gods mentioned in the Rigveda, for the collection, 
being in large measure immediately connected with the Soma sacrifice, gives 
less than normal room to those deities who do not for whatever reason come 
into special contact with that sacrifice. Thus, on the numerical figures * of 
frequency of mention of their names, the gods of the Rigveda can be arranged 
in five groups as (1) Indra, Agni, Soma; (2) Acvins, Maruts, Varuna ; 
(3) Usas, Savitr, Brhaspati, Stirya, Pisan; (4) Vayu, Dyavaprthivi, Visnu, 
Rudra; (5) Yama, Parjanya. There can be no doubt of the importance of 
Agni and Soma to the priests, but we may doubt their popularity in equal 
degree with the people. The Acvins again were doubtless popular deities, but 
their prominence numerically is due to their connexion with the morning 
light and the offering of the sacrifice, while the Maruts are brought into a 
high place by their association with Indra. It follows, therefore, that any 
classification of the gods by their relative frequency of mention in the Rigveda 


Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 146-50. Sa leo 
* GGS. iii. 10 ; AGS. ii. 4. 12. ‘ Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 294-300. 
* ApCS. xii. 26. 8 ff.; CCS. vii.8; €B.iv. ° Macdonell, Ved. Myth., p. 20. 


94 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


would be futile, and the alternative of following the order of the origin of the 
mythological conception is open to the fatal objection that to determine this 
order no means are available. 

Any division of the subject-matter must therefore in the main be based on 
considerations of convenience. These considerations lead to the view that 
the most satisfactory order is to treat first of the greater gods as celestial 
(Chap. 8), aerial (Chap. 9), and terrestrial (Chap. 10), of the minor nature 
deities (Chap. 11), of the abstract deities (Chap. 12), and of the groups of 
divinities (Chap. 13). Then will follow the priests and heroes of old times, 
including some figures who may be suspected of being faded gods (Chap. 14). 
The demons will be treated together in the next chapter (15). In origin they 
are clearly in part derived from natural phenomena, as is the case with the 
chief enemies of the gods as opposed to the demons which afflict men: of 
the latter some may doubtless be derived from the conception of the spirits 
of the hostile dead, others are more vaguely animistic in origin, while yet 
others seem developed from a naturalistic or animatistic basis in the 
noxious or tricky forms of nature. The relations between the gods and 
their worshippers, apart from the sacrifice and the ritual, will be dealt with 
in Chap. 16, while the question of the spirits of the dead and the cult of 
ancestors, the Fathers, will be reserved for connected treatment in Part IV. 


a —_— 


CHAPTER 8 
THE GREAT GODS—CELESTIAL 


§ 1. Dyaus the Father 


Dyaus has the honour of being the only Indo-European god who is 
certainly to be recognized as having existed in the earliest period, and he has 
been claimed for that time as a real sovereign of the gods, much as Zeus among 
the Greeks.1 For this view there is clearly no cogent evidence available, 
though equally there is no cogent evidence to the contrary, for the fact that 
Dyaus is not a great god in India may be due to decline in greatness, not to 
the absence of such greatness originally. In the Rigveda he has not a single 
hymn of his own, and his appearance is nearly always in one or other of two 
capacities : either he is the parent, who has as children Usas, the A¢vins, Agni, 
Parjanya, Strya, the Adityas, the Maruts, and the Angirases, or he is coupled 
with the earth, Prthivi, or at least mentioned with other deities of whom 
Prthivi is normally one?; the legend of the union and separation of the two is 
often referred to, but without detail. Where he stands alone, he is mentioned 
as father of Indra, of Agni, as a father, as rich in seed, as a red bull which 
bellows downward, or, by another theriomorphic idea, as a black steed decked 
with pearls, an obvious allusion to the midnight sky. He smiles through the 
clouds, a trait which can only refer to the lightening sky, and an incipient 
anthropomorphism appears in the statement that he holds the bolt. With 
Prthivi he shares six hymns, but they have little force or significance ; of more 
interest is the fact that sky and earth are called the two mothers, and that not 
rarely the word dyaus is feminine, a fact which shows that much weight cannot 
be laid on the contrast between male and female, stress upon which as a 
principle of Vedic reliyion has been laid by Bergaigne.? With the higher 
life of the community Dyaus has little to do; he bears the usual title of 
the great gods, Asura, and with earth he is asked to avert sin committed 
against the gods or a friend or the head of the clan, but this is merely 
an application to the god of a commonplace prayer.*’ The Vedic evidence 


1 von Bradke, Dyaus Asura ; von Schroeder, iii. 397. 
Arische Religion, i. 299 ff. Moulton * Hopkins, Rel. of India, pp. 438, 59. The 
(Early Zoroastrianism, pp. 391-3) finds idea has been revived in K. J. Johan- 
this god expressly recorded by his sson, Ueber die altind. Géttin Dhisand 
South Indo-European name in Hero- (1919), but see Oldenberg, GGA. 1919, 
dotos, i. 131, but not very plausibly. pp. 357 ff. 
Contrast Helm, Altgerm. Rel. i. 272;  ‘* The theory of the ghost origin of Dyaus 
Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, pp. 109 f. (Feist, Kultur der Indogermanen, pp. 
2 The two receive a good deal of attention in 339 ff.) is wholly improbable and quite 


the ritual; MHillebrandt, Ved. Myth. contrary to the Veda. 


96 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


is, it should be noted, clearly opposed to the view of Warde Fowler,! 
which does not recognize physical paternity as the primitive sense of 
pater in religion. 


§ 2. Varuna, Mitra, and the Adityas 


The slight prominence of Dyaus in the Indian period is doubtless in part at 
least due to the prominence of Mitra and Varuna, of which pair the greatest 
by far is Varuna. Mitra, indeed, by his close association with Varuna has 
lost any real independence of character. Though Varuna is anthropomorphic 
and has arms, hands, feet, walks, drives, sits, eats, and drinks, the cosmic 
character of his eye is brought very clearly: the eye of Mitra and Varuna 
is repeatedly declared to be the sun, and it figures conspicuously in all the 
hymns regarding Varuna. Varuna is also far-sighted and thousand-eyed : 
he wears a golden mantle and a shining robe. He and Mitra drive with the 
rays of the sun as with arms, and like Savitr and Tvastr they are beautiful 
handed. In striking contrast with this picture of a fair god is that suggested 
by a passage in the Catapatha Brahmana,? where Varuna is described as a 
bald yellow-eyed old man; but this passage must be read in its context, from 
which it appears clearly that we have to deal not with a primitive, but with 
a mystical, view of the nature of Varuna. 

Like other gods, Mitra and Varuna have a chariot which they mount in the 
highest heaven, and in heaven is their golden abode, which is lofty with a 
thousand columns and a thousand doors. To that palace resorts the all-seeing 
sun to report to Varuna the deeds of men: init the Fathers behold him, and the 
Catapatha Brahmana‘* represents Varuna as seated in the midst of heaven, 
gazing upon the places of punishment around him. 

With Mitra, or alone, Varuna is often styled a king; he is king of both 
gods and men, of all that exists, of the whole world. He bears also the title 
of independent ruler (svardj) which is more specially Indra’s, and, much 
oftener than Indra, he is called universal monarch (samrdj), a title found 
a few times also of Agni. With Mitra and twice also with Aryaman, he 
is accorded the attribute of sovereignty (ksatra) which is elsewhere given 
but once each to Agni, Brhaspati, and the Acvins ; similarly the term ruler 
is given to him in four of its five occurrences, and but once to the gods 
in general.’ He and Mitra are the noble lords of the gods, and the epithet 
Asura © is given to him in proportion far oftener than to Indra and Agni. 


1 Religious Experience of the Roman People, ° A relic of this is seen in the Brahmana 


pp. 155 ff. Contrast von Schroeder, legend that the gods made him their 
Arische Religion, i. 809 ff., 569 f. king, despite the fact that he was 
* In the case of Dyaus the regular use of the merely their brother, because he had 
word as a common noun doubtless told the form (répa) of Prajapati, their 
against his personality ; see Usener, father, JB.iii. 152 ; cf. PB. xiii. 9. 22 ff. 
Gétternamen, pp. 315 ff. ° An effort to find in the epic Asura Maya 
“PMI. '3.10. 5. a trace of Mazdah in India may be 


cei be a Wie rejected (Keith, JRAS. 1916, p. 138). 


Chap. 8] Varuna, Mitra, and the Adityas 97 


Characteristic of the two gods is their mystic power, Mayé.t With it 
Varuna measures out the earth with the sun as with a measure; Varuna and 
Mitra make the sun to cross the sky, the rain to fall, and send the dawns. All 
physical order is subject to the control of Varuna with or without Mitra: the 
law of Varuna holds earth and sky apart; the three heavens and the three 
earths are deposited within him ; heaven, earth, and air are supported by the 
two gods; the wind is the breath of Varuna. By his ordinances the moon 
moves at night and the stars shine. He embraces the nights and establishes 
the mornings. He regulates the seasons: the kings, Mitra, Varuna, and 
Aryaman, dispose the autumn, the month, day and night. From another 
point of view Mitra and Varuna are essentially connected with rain, and among 
the gods they are most frequently invoked to bestow the gift of rain. Occa- 
sionally even in the Rigveda Varuna appears connected with the waters of the 
ocean, to which flow the seven rivers, but the ocean ? is little known in the 
Rigveda, and his real connexion with water is that with the waters of the air, 
whence comes it that in the Naighantuka he is ranked as an aerial no less than 
a celestial god. | 

But more important than these physical attributes of the god are his moral | 
qualities, his control of the order of the world in its ethical aspect no less than 
in its physical, his connexion with the worshipper as the saviour in time of | 
peril and distress, the freer from sin, the merciful god, as well as the punisher 
of the sinner to whom he sends the disease, dropsy, which accords with his | 
nature as lord of the waters. This characteristic of Varuna is one which will 
most conveniently be considered below (Chap. 16), but it is essential to note © 
that this side of Varuna’s nature is one which steadily disappears in the later 
texts, though it does not absolutely vanish.? 

In the later literature there are other marked changes in the character of 
the god. In the first place Mitra and Varuna come to be placed into relation 
with the sun and the moon respectively : Mitra is said to have produced the 
day, Varuna the night: the night is Varuna’s, the day Mitra’s. In the 
Atharvaveda ‘ it is said ‘ At evening he is Varuna, Agni; Mitra he becometh 
arising in the morning’ and ‘ That which Varuna hath drawn together, shal] 
Mitra asunder part in the morning.’ Even more significant is the fact that 
in the ritual to Mitra and Varuna respectively white and black victims are 
sometimes ascribed: there can be no doubt of the significance of this dis- 
tinction in treatment of the two gods. In the second place there is a marked 


* Von Eradke, ZDMG. xlviii. 499-501 ; 9. 7, 17 (offerings niroarunatvaya, 
Hillebrandt, VOJ. xiii. 316 ff. i.e. to deprecate punishment for error), 

2 It is invoked, RV. vi. 50. 14; vii. 35. 13 ; But his curse is feeble (PB. xii. 18. 2), 
WHIT L Dee oisrxXe OG LLL -e Ls. 166. 2 5 and his chief use is to dispose of errors 
MS. iv. 9. 8; AGS. ii. 4. 14; MGS. i. in the offering, PB. xiii. 2. 4.; xv. 1.3; 
13.15; Kauc. lxxiv. 6, &c. 2.4; 7. 7; he guards what is well 

* It is hardly fair to speak of his demoniac offered, Visnu repairs errors, AB. iii. 38. 
power (Hopkins, Trans. Conn. Acad., ¢‘ xiii. 3.13; ix. 3.183; cf. TS. ii. 1. 7. 45 
xv. 44) on the strength of PB. xviii. vi. 4. 8. 3. 


7 [x.0.s. 31] 


98 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


tendency to reduce Varuna to the control of the waters. In the Atharvaveda ? 
he is connected with the waters as is Soma with the mountains ; his golden 
house is in the waters ; he sheds rain waters, and he and Mitra are the lords of 
waters. In the Yajurveda 2 similarly the waters are his wives, and he is the 
child of the waters, in which he establishes his abode, and Mitra and Varuna 
are the leaders of the waters. It is true that for these conceptions close 
parallels exist in the Rigveda, but the essential feature is that, in the new 
matter supplied by these Vedas, nothing which is not specifically connected 
with the waters is of much account. It is quite possible that the connexion 
with the moon aided the connexion with the waters, but this cannot be proved; 
in the Brahmanas we find not merely the recognition of the connexion of the 
moon with rain, but equally the view that rain comes from the sun. Some force 
may be assigned to the view that with the growing knowledge of the ocean the 
tendency to restrict Varuna to that element increased parallel with the steady 
decline in the importance attached to the moral aspect of Varuna as a universal 
ruler. 

Apart from his connexion with Varuna we know little of Mitra: one 
hymn alone is given to him in the whole of the Rigveda,? whence we learn 
that he ‘brings men together by the utterance of his voice, and watches the 
tillers with unwinking eye. In one passage Savitr is identified with him, and 
Visnu is said to take his three steps by the laws of Mitra, whence it may be 
assumed that he is supposed to regulate the course of the sun. The name 
is normally supposed to have been derived from the use of the word as friend, 
with which accords the fact that Mitra is essentially a kindly god, and in the 
Taittiriya Samhita * appears as promoting concord: Oldenberg® has sug- 
gested that the use of the word arises rather from the name of the god whom. 
he believes to have been invoked in compacts, perhaps with the use of a fetish 
of the god as part of the rite and the seven steps, which are mentioned in the 
Rigveda ® as a bond of friendship, and which in the marriage ritual are an 
essential part of the rite. The Iranian Mithra is obviously the same god, and, 
as his sun nature is almost absolutely certain, it is reasonable and natural 
to ascribe to the Vedic Mitra the same character. It is no objection to this 
view that the sun is described as the eye of Mitra : apart from the fact that the- 
separation of the god from the natural substratum is perfectly natural, and can 
be seen in progress even in the Avesta where Mithra comes forth over the 
mountain of sunrise before the sun, it must be remembered that, in association 
with Varuna, Mitra can easily have obtained a description which strictly 
applied only to Varuna. 

The Adityas form a somewhat indefinite group of gods: in the Rigveda 
they are accorded six whole hymns and portions of two others. The original 
number is slightly uncertain; once’ only in the Rigveda is it given as seven, 


A 1li, 3.35 1v. 15.123 vil. 88.1; v.24. 1-5. STE pl aiOcits 
ELD Aeek st Vi. 4, ba aiViD aT 5 Rel. des Veda’, p. 188, n. 3. 
3 iii, 59. orivaSa ls 1 ix. 114.88 


Chap. 8] Varuna, Mitra, and the Adityas 99 


and once ! also as eight, but in that passage the priority of seven is clearly 
shown by the fact that it is stated that Aditi, their mother, at first presented 
only seven to the gods, and the eighth, Martanda, ‘ sprung of a dead egg,’ 
came afterwards. The number seven is also found observed in the ritual of 
the Yajurveda? at a time when unquestionably the number twelve was 
normally accepted for the Adityas. But the Rigveda at no time enumerates 
more than six and that once only, when the list is Mitra, Aryaman, Bhaga, 
Varuna, Daksa, and Anea. Sirya, however, is an Aditya in the Rigveda, and 
he may be taken to make up the seven, with Martanda as the setting sun 
as the eighth. The Atharvaveda ? gives Aditi eight sons and the Taittiriya 
Brahmana* gives their names as Mitra, Varuna, Aryaman, Anca, Bhaga, 
Dhatr, Indra and Vivasvant. The term Aditya is, however, applied to Indra, 
once in connexion with Varuna and once as the fourth Aditya. The Aditya 
par excellence, however, is Varuna, next comes Mitra, and next Aryaman. In 
the Brahmanas the number of the Adityas is normally fixed at twelve, and 
they are identified with the twelve months. This explanation of their number 
is much more natural and plausible than the view of Oldenberg > that the 
number is borrowed from the Jagati metre which is associated with the 
Adityas. In the Maitrayani Samhita ° we find Indra distinguished expressly 
from the group of twelve. More generally, however, all the gods seem not 
rarely to be styled Adityas, as is natural enough since the only real character- 
istic the group can be said to possess is that they are the gods of the light of the 
heaven. 

The Adityas, sons of Aditi, as their name denotes, are bright, golden, un- 
winking, sinless, pure, and holy. They hate falsehood and punish sin; they 
fetter their enemies, but protect as with armour their votaries, and forgive 
their wickedness; sickness and distress they repel, and grant the usual 
boons of long life and offspring. | 

Of the individual deities Aryaman, who is Indo-Iranian in character, and 
may even be akin to the Irish ancestor Airem, has practically no distinctive 
feature save his friendly nature which makes him a parallel with Mitra : 
the word also denotes groomsman, and this idea is, it seems, associated with 
the god, who is thus brought into connexion with human life and marriage. 
His path is alluded to, whence Indian tradition regards him as the sun, but 
Weber as the milky way.” Bhaga, as his name denotes, is the bountiful, 
or perhaps rather the god of good fortune, the disposition which produces 
in a woman luck in marriage, for a man success in the assembly, in the hunt, in 
dicing, or in winning pupils, and plays on the name of the god are not un- 
natural in a religion so full of the spirit of greed for the bounty of the patrons 
“bol Psst hata bbbk bale 
® TS.ii. 3.1.5. This fact is of consequence ‘ i. 1.9.1. 

and Hillebrandt (Ved. Myth.iii.103,104)  ° Rel. des Veda', p. 186, n. 2. 

does not answer it. Cf. von Schroeder, ‘° ii. 1. 12. 

Arische Religion, i. 427 ff., who thinks 7 Sadyanaon (CB. v.3.1.2; Weber, Festgruss 


Parjanya was the seventh Aditya. an Roth, p. 138 ; Rdjastiya, p. 84, n. 2. 
7k 
( 


100 | The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


of the priests ; Dawn is his sister, and Yaska describes him as presiding over 
the forenoon. His name is the equivalent of the Avestan bagha, ‘ god,’ which 
is an epithet of Ahura himself, of Bagaios in Phrygia, and of the Old Church 
Slavonic bogt, ‘god’.1_ Anca is mentioned but three times in all: his name 
denotes the apportioner and nothing but his bounty is recorded. Daksa 
occurs about twice as often, and is a more interesting figure: in one hymn 
of the late tenth book ? he is said to be the father of Aditi and also the son 
of Aditi, and the gods are made later in origin : in another passage the existent 
and non-existent are said to have been in the womb of Aditi, the birthplace 
of Daksa. The word means no more than ‘ clever ’, and there can be no doubt 
that he is the product of priestly ingenuity. The Adityas and also Mitra and 
Varuna are called sons of skill, just as they are called sons of strength: from 
this epithet the element skill has been elevated into the name of a god, and 
in the Catapatha Brahmana ® Daksa is exalted to the rank of Prajapati: at no 
time can he have been anything but a mere abstraction of a type especially 
dear to the later priestly intelligence, which delighted in the conception of the 
god, who was at one and the same time the father and the son of his mother. 

The natural conception which lies at the root of Varuna and the Adityas, 


is, it is clear, far from obvious. Both Varuna and the group of Adityas have 
‘lost or never had immediate connexion with nature, and have developed their 


individuality in such a way as to make their original identity uncertain. Con- 
trast with Indra shows that Varuna’s original nature must have been some- 
thing which afforded little chance of the growth of mythology : practically no 


_ myth is connected with Varuna at all, while the strong god Indra is the subject 


of by far the greater number of Vedic myths. The name of Varuna gives little 
assistance : it has been connected with the Greek Ouranos, but the phonetic 
correspondence # is not yet clearly made out, and the identity must remain 
doubtful : it seems naturally to be derived from the root vr, cover, so that the 
first meaning would be the coverer or encompasser, and native tradition 
explains it in this sense as the god who envelops like darkness or covers with 
his bonds. If so, the parallel and contrast with Vrtra are interesting. It is 
possible that it originally was an epithet of sky, as the all-encompassing, but 
it would be too dangerous to lay any stress on the apparent etymological 
sense as denoting the character of the god. 

In the view of Oldenberg,® Varuna was originally the moon, as Mitra was 
1 This may be a loan word. There is no ? x. 72.4, 5; 5.7. 


decisive evidence; cf. Oldenberg, * ii. 4. 4. 2. 
Rel. des Veda*, p. 190, n. 2; von * Macdonell, Ved. Myth., p. 177; Meillet, 


Schroeder, Arische Religion, i. 288 ff., JA. 1907, ii. 156 f. 

562-7, who distinguishes the Greeks, ° Rel. des Veda’, pp. 187 ff.; ZDMG. 1. 43- 
Romans, Germans, and Celts as of 68; cf. F. W. Thomas, JRAS. 1916, 
centum speech, and adorers of a warlike pp. 3863 f.; T. Segerstedt (RHR. Ivii. 
god, and one who patronizes political 195 ff.) finds in Varuna an aboriginal 
activity, from the satem speakers with deity. Carnoy (JAOS. xxxvi. 307 f.) 
their milder deity, but unconvincingly inclines to suggest comparison with 


(Oldenberg, GN. 1915, pp. 861-72). Sin for Varuna, and Samaég for Mitra, 


Chap. 8] Varuna, Mitra, and the Adityas 101 


the sun, and he with the Adityas, of whom he is one, were not originally 
Indo-European gods, but were borrowed by the united Indo-Iranian people 
from some Semitic race, which had a more advanced knowledge of astronomy 
than the Vedic Indians, and which knew the five planets, which with the sun 


and moon made up the seven Adityas. But he does not consider that, when ' 


the gods were taken over, they were really fully understood in their original 
nature by the Indo-Iranians, and in particular he believes that the strongly 
ethical aspect of Varuna had already been developed, since this fact alone can 
explain how a moon god took precedence of the sun god Mitra. He rejects of 
course connexion with Ouranos, and he lays stress on the fact that these two 
gods seem a distinct innovation as compared with the ordinary Indo-European 
gods. The conception of Varuna as moon god is also shared by Hillebrandt + 
and by Hardy. 

The arguments of Oldenberg are of importance and weight : it is perfectly 
true that the moral quality of Varuna and of the Adityas is of a different species 
from that of Indra and most of the other members of the Vedic pantheon, to 
whom morality is rather an outward accretion than an internal principle. It 
is true also that the history of Indian religion is one of the decadence of 
Varuna before the claims on the one hand of the warrior god Indra, the god 
par excellence of the Indian warrior, and on the other hand of Agni, the god 
of the sacrifice and of the sacrificial priest, and of Prajapati, in whom the cos- 


mological and pantheistic views of the more reflective section of the priest- 


hood found their expression. Prajapati is from the philosophic point of view 
a much greater personage than Varuna, but he has no real connexion with 
morality, just as the philosophy of India has no place in which to ascribe to 
morality any real value. But to hold that this ethical quality must have been 
introduced from without not only into Indian, but also into Iranian religion, 
seems to go far beyond what can be made even probable. What ground have 
we, it must be asked, for denying to the people of Iran the capacity of develop- 
ing such deities for themselves ? The reform of Zoroaster is a proof that Iran 
was capable of moral fervour and energy, and that Iran was subjected to 


effective Semitic influence has been rendered most improbable.? The decline | 
of Varuna in India is not a proof that the Vedic Indians were incapable of | 
having such a deity as Varuna brought with them from earlier Iranian homes, | 


but that the effect of the admixture of race in India itself was fatal to the 


whence Mitra’s nature as this sun gods of Babylon and the seven planets 
(Les Indo-Européens, pp. 172 ff.). He see also Jeremias in Roscher’s Lewxicon, 
sees a triad in India, Varuna, Mitra, iii.67. The AmeSa Spenta are discussed 
Aryaman, parallel to Ahura Mazdah, by Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, 
Mithra, Anahita, and thinks the number pp. 73ff., 96ff., 296ff.; L. Gray, 
seven connected with the seven spirits Archiv f. Relig. vii. 345-72 ; B. Geiger, 
of good and evil, Igigi and Anunnaki. Die Amega Spentas (1916); L. von 
1 Ved. Myth. iii. 1-51. He denies the Schroeder, Arische Religion, i. 430 ff. 
identity of Asura and Ahura Mazdah, ? Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, pp. 67, 98, 
but this is a hopeless idea; above, 237-43 ; von Schroeder, Arische Re- 


Part I, Chap. 4, § 1. For the seven ligion, i. 439 f. 


102 The Gods and Demons of the Veda {Part II 


| conception of Varuna. Moreover, borrowing of deities can only be made 

' plausible when the precise deity borrowed can be specified and identity of 
character indicated if not proved, and when the name in addition can be 
traced. In the case of Varuna and the Adityas the effort to show the group 
of deities which has been borrowed cannot even be made, and the suggestion 
of borrowing is therefore methodologically unsound. 

Nor is there really any insuperable difficulty in finding another naturalistic 
basis for Varuna and an explanation of his moral authority. The old view that 
Varuna is the all encompassing sky is not open to any serious objection. It 
explains perfectly well all that he does in the physical world : his place, in the 
highest heaven, his sending of rain, the fact that the sun is his eye, his epithet 
of far-seeing, his thousand eyes which doubtless point to the stars of night— 
possibly his spies, though that conception may be otherwise explained as 
belonging to the conception of him as king ? it is no objection that Varuna 
is represented as mounting a car in the highest heaven with Mitra: the god is 
clearly to some degree detached from his material substratum, and therefore 
is treated in this point as any other deity. The conception of an almighty 
ruler is most easily developed from the vast expanse of the sky, on which the 
sun moves in its regular course, and which seems to gaze upon the deeds of 
men. It is of course impossible to prove that Zeus has attained his position 
in the Hellenic pantheon entirely in this way, but the parallel is certainly 
striking enough to render the view that Varuna thus became a great moral 
ruler reasonable enough. 

On the other hand the comparison of the Adityas and the Ame%a Spenta 
seems certainly right and the objections which have been raised to it are not 
of a serious kind.? It is true that neither in India nor in Iran is the number 
seven absolutely fixed, but as early as the Rigveda the number seven is 
evidently becoming the normal one, and similarly in the Avesta the number 
seven is springing up, in the close connexion between Zoroaster and six other 
spirits. The fact that these six spirits do not correspond in name or function 
precisely with the Indian deities is of no consequence, if we adopt the view 
that the deities were not in the Indo-Iranian period very closely connected 
with any sphere of nature.* This is certainly supported by the obvious fact 
that in India the figures of Bhaga, Anca, Daksa, and Aryaman are abstract, 
while the whole six in Iran are of this type. To presume an independent 


* Foy, Die kénigliche Gewalt, pp. 80-6; * See Macdonell, Ved. Myth., p. 44; Hille- 


Moulton (op. cit., p. 61) inclines to deny brandt’s objections are in Ved. Myth. 
any celestial character in the god ; von iii. 122 ff.; Moulton’s Early Zoroas- 
Schroeder (Arische Religion, i. 348) trianism, p. 98 ; cf. Oldenberg, ZDMG. 
finds two roots of Varuna’s character, 1. 43 ff. 

the observation of the glories of the sky * L. H. Gray (Archiv fiir Religionswissen- 
and the consciousness of the moral law, schaft, vii. 345-72) sees in them pre- 
in harmony with his belief in the latter Iranian nature powers, but without 
consideration as one of the three cogent grounds; cf. von Schroeder, 
essential roots of religion, beside nature Arische Religion, i. 282, n.1; Giintert, 


worship and belief in souls. Der arische Weltkonig, pp. 170 ff. 


Chap. 8] Varuna, Mitra, and the Adityas 103 


development of the ideas in both countries is really to assume something much 
more improbable than a common origin. Oldenberg’s theory that the five 
other than Mitra and Varuna represented the planets is wholly without sup- 
port either in Iran or India, where the knowledge of the planets cannot be 
attributed at all to the age of the Rigveda or even much later. 

Apart from the question of Semitic origin the identification of Varuna 
with the moon is absolutely without support. It can only be justified by the 
later Samhitas, which, however, are far more readily explained by the obvious 
fact that Varuna was being superseded in his position of greatness by Indra, 
Agni, and Prajapati, and that accordingly it was natural for the priest to seek 
to find some position for him, which would naturally explain his connexion 
with Mitra, whose nature as a sun god was never forgotten in Iran or India. 
With the hypothesis of Varuna as a moon god might, of course, be brought 
into connexion the fact that the Adityas are seven, which has also been cited 
for their Semitic origin. But there is no real proof of the existence of any 
knowledge in Vedic India of a seven-day week, and it may be added that, save 
for the Jewish seven-day week, no such period is proved? for any Semitic 
civilization at an early date. 

Yet another view of the position of Varuna and Mitra is that presented by 
E. Meyer.? He sees in them later productions of the religious conception : 
while Indra, if not in name, at least in essence, is an Indo-European god, 
being really one aspect of the sky god, Varuna and Mitra are essentially pro- 
ducts of the Indo-Iranian period of religious thought, and the Asuras never are 
on the same level with the Devas: in India for a time, that is in the period 
of the Rigveda, they seem to have been to some extent recognized as at least 
equal with the Devas, and Varuna actually in some circles ranked above Indra, 
but this condition did not last, and, while in the case of Iran the Zoroastrian 
reform developed the essential character of the Asuras and made the Daévas 
demons, in India the Asuras sank to demons, and Varuna was relegated to the 
position of lord of the sea, while Mitra was little but aname. The origin of the 
deities he traces in moral, not natural concepts, the nature connexion of the 
gods being due to the inability of primitive thought to remain at the high 
pitch of moral conception, Mitra is primarily * the lord of the contract, that 
between individual men no less than that between clans and states, while 
Varuna is the god of the oath.® Hence perhaps Varuna is to be deemed to 


1 Hopkins (Oriental Studies, p. 159) assumes wrong. Cf. Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth., 
it for the AV. but without proof. p- 123. 

2 Above, Part I, Chap. 4, § 2. ® Liiders, SBA. 1910, p. 931. The occurence 

3 Gesch. des Alt.® I. ii. pp. 922-4. of both in the Mitanni treaty is assumed 

4 Meillet, JA. 1907,ii. 143; Carnoy, Les Indo- to support this view by Cuny, Rev. éi. 
Européens, pp. 172 ff. Moulton (Early anc. 1909, pp. 279 f. Speculations as to 
Zoroastrianism, pp. 62-7) tries to make Mitra in Egypt and his influence on the 
out that Mitra is a combination of a god Aten worship are interesting but of no 
of contract and a Semitic Rain god importance for Indian religion. Cf, 


(Assyrian Metru), but this is clearly Max Miller, OLZ. 1912, pp. 252 ff. 


104 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part 1E 


have been connected with the ocean surrounding the world, by which, as in 
the case of the Styx in Greek religion, oaths might be taken, and from this 
connexion with water developed his connexion with the waters of the heaven, 
the earth, and the ocean alike. But from their moral position the two gods are 
both essentially celestial, Mitra being especially connected in thought with the 
sun, while Varuna was less definitely restricted in his physical range. The 
possibility of connexion between Varuna and Ouranos Meyer naturally denies,+ 

The evidence adduced to the views of Meyer is inadequate ; it is quite clear 
that Varuna and Mitra came into special connexion with the agreement and 
the oath respectively, but neither fact is enough to show that the deity was 
developed from either conception alone, and we cannot prove that it is more 
plausible to assume such a derivation than to accept the view that to these 
great gods of the sky the conception of the control of moral order and contract 
was naturally assigned. The importance of the sun as a deity is sufficiently 
shown for Iranian religion by the fact that he became the chief god of the 
Massagetae,? and the importance of Mithra as a sun-god in later Iran is 
notorious. It is on the other hand more easy to understand how concrete gods 
attained moral aspects ® than to believe that moral gods became so remarkably 
concrete in nature. 


§ 3. Surya, Savitr, and Pisan 


In Strya we have the sun-god in his simplest and most direct form, and 
ten hymns of the Rigveda are devoted to him. His natural character is very 
obvious in all that is told of him: he is the eye of the sky or of Varuna and 
Mitra: he is far-seeing, the spy of the whole world who looks on the deeds 
of men and rouses them to action. He is an Aditya, but is also distinguished 
from the Adityas. Like other gods he is a son of Dyaus. In the Purusasikta 
he is made to be born from the eye of Purusa, and by an inversion of this idea 
the eye of the dead man is said to go to the sun. A late and absurd legend 
of the Atharvaveda makes the sun as Divakara born from the demon Vrtra. 

Many gods stand in close connexion with Sirya: from the lap of the 
dawns he shines forth, and he is also the husband of Dawn: Pisan is his 
messenger, Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman make his path; Indra, Visnu, Soma, 
Dhatr, and the Angirases all are said to create him or produce him. 

The chief feat of Sirya is his shining for the world, for gods, and men: 


1 Feist (Kultur der Indogermanen, p. 343, and Aryan religion is doubtless due to 
n. 1) admits the similarity of the two similar conditions of development on 
ideas and names, and therefore ascribes the steppes (cf. Minns, Scythians and 
them to a non-Indo-Germanic common Greeks, pp. 85 ff.; Meyer, Gesch. des 
source; he treats Saranyi-Erinys, Alt. I. ii. pp. 887-95). 
Gandharva-Kentauros, similarly. * For Mithra’s guardianship of truth see 

2 Herodotos, i. 216. There is no reason to Yast, x. 2. Giintert (pp. 146 ff.) holds 
deny the Iranian character of this him and Varuna (ver, bind) abstract. 


people, even if it were in part of mixed ‘ For the Indo-European sun-god see L. von 
blood; the similarity of Mongolian Schroeder, Arische Religion, ii. 8 ff. 


Chap. 8] Sarya, Savitr, and Pisan 105 


he smites away the darkness and triumphs over the powers of darkness and 
witches ; he prolongs the lives of men and drives away sickness, disease, and 
evil dreams. He is also the divine priest of the gods, and is entreated on his 
rising to declare men sinless before Mitra and Varuna. When invoked with 
Indra he becomes a slayer of Vrtra. But another myth tells that Indra de- 
feated him and stole his wheel, a fairly obvious allusion to the obscuration of 
the sun by the thunderstorm. 

The chariot of the sun is drawn by a single horse, Etaca, or by seven horses, 
or seven mares, or by an indefinite number of either. But the more primitive 
view that the sun himself is a steed is found in one passage,! where he is said 
to be the white and brilliant steed brought by Usas. But he is also a flying 
bird,? or an eagle, and a mottled bull.? He is also, however, a gem of the sky,* 
the variegated stone set in the midst of heaven, a brilliant weapon obscured by 
Mitra and Varuna with cloud and rain, the felly of Mitra and Varuna, a 
brilliant car, or a wheel. In the ritual the horse and the wheel appear as sun 
fetishes. 

While Sirya represents the concrete aspect of the sun, Savitr, the stimu- 
lator or instigator, seems to denote the sun as the motive power which drives 
men to action. In some passages the two gods are apparently used as 
identical, but in others the two gods appear in connexion with each other and 
as different : Savitr is said to impel Sirya, to declare men sinless to the sun, 
to combine with the rays of the sun, or to shine with the rays of the sun, 
Savitr is also implored to strengthen the worshipper when the sun is risen. 

Savitr is pre-eminently a golden god: his eyes, hands, tongue, and arms 
are of gold: his hair is yellow: he wears a tawny garment and fares in a 
golden car. But, unlike Strya, he has two, not seven, steeds. The type of his 
action is the raising of his arms to rouse men: the action of Agni, Brhaspati, 
and the dawns is compared to it. He travels through the air on dustless paths, 
and is implored to convey the departed souls to the place where the righteous 
dwell. He grants the gods and men immortality, and makes the Rbhus 
immortal. Like Stirya, he drives away the evil spirits and the wizards. His 
power is sometimes extolled in striking terms, as when Indra, Varuna, Mitra, 
Aryaman, and Rudra are said not to be able to resist him, and like other gods 
he supports the sky and extends the earth. 

From Agni he borrows the epithet of son of the waters, and probably also 
that of domestic : from this connexion also perhaps comes his assignment by 
the Naighantuka to the aerial as well as to the celestial world. His power of 
stimulation leads to his identification with Prajapatiin the Brahmanas, With 
Pisan he is equated or closely connected : the Savitri verse,® which is used in 
the daily ritual of the orthodox Hindu, occurs immediately after an invocation 
of the god Pisan. Bhaga again is identified with Savitr, or Savitr with 


MV Vile. a dete * RV. vii. 63. 4. 
2 RV.i. 191. 9. SP Ve ilaO2 10s 
* RV. v. 47. 8. 


106 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part 11 


Bhaga, in the single conception of Savitr Bhaga ; 1 it is natural that elsewhere 
he should be distinguished. 

The later tradition of Yaska* suggests that the distinction was drawn 
between Sirya and Savitr in that the latter was the sun before his rising 
and after the dawn; but this conception is artificial, and is not supported by 
the Rigveda, where rather Savitr seems especially invoked at the beginning of 
the day and at its close, and his sound (¢loka) may be compared to the Germanic 
belief in the noise emitted by the sun in his rising.* 

In nearly half its occurrences the name Savitr is coupled with Deva, a fact 
which strongly suggest that the word still was felt in large measure as an 
epithet : indeed in two passages the name seems to be given as an epithet to 
Tvastr. It is, of course, possible that, as Oldenberg* holds, the god is an 
abstract deity pure and simple, and that he is merely assimilated to the sun, 
but the simpler and more natural view is to assume that Savitr is one aspect 
of Stirya, the most important aspect of the power which wakens man to his 
work and the priest to his sacrifice. 

Pisan is a curious and enigmatic figure: he is the subject of eight hymns 
only, five of them in book vi. He has, like Rudra, braided hair, and a beard. 
He carries not only a spear, but an awl, and a goad. He differs from other 
deities in that his chariot is drawn by goats, and that he eats mush, either 
because he is toothless as the Catapatha Brahmana ® declares him to be, or, 
as is much more likely, for some cause unknown to us, in which case the 
ascription of lack of teeth to the god is due no doubt to transfer from 
the habits of men. 

Pisan shares with the gods in general the usual attributes of strength, 
glory, wisdom, generosity, and like the Acvins he is termed wonder worker, 
while with Agni alone he bears the epithet of Naradcansa, probably felt as 
“extolled by men’. He is most frequently invoked with Bhaga and Visnu 
of the other gods: in joint laudations he is found with Soma and Indra, 
while his food is expressly distinguished from the Soma of Indra, nevertheless 
in one passage it is attributed to Indra, and in two passages the libation to 
Indra is said to be mixed with it. The characteristic epithets of Pisan’s 
activity are those which denote him as the bringer of prosperity, who loses 
neither goods nor cattle. Pisan is essentially concerned with safefaring on 
paths: he is born himself on the far path of paths, the far path of heaven and 
earth, and between the two beloved abodes he goes and returns. Hence 
it follows that he is a guardian of roads, he makes the paths safe by removing 
the wolf and the waylayer : his epithet vimuco napdat may be rendered either 
‘son of unyoking’ after safe arrival, or ‘son of deliverance’, and in the 
Atharvaveda ® he is definitely called upon to deliver from sin. As he is lord 


1 Bergaigne, Rel. Véd. iii. 39. 473 ff. ; lix. 253 f.; GN. 1915, p. 198. 

SSNINs X10) 2. But the detachment of epithets is not 

3 RV. v. 82. 9; Tacitus, Germania, 45; uncommon; cf. Farnell, Greek Hero 
Grimm, Deutsche Myth.‘, pp. 606, 621. Cults, pp. 80 ff.; Giintert, pp. 157 ff. 


« Rel. des Veda’, pp. 68, 64; ZDMG. li. © i, 7. 4. 7. 6 vi. 112. 3. 


Chap. 8] Sarya, Savitr, and Pisan 107 


of the roads and a guide, he is invoked by the man who proposes to make 
a journey and by the man who on his way is lost.!_ In the morning and evening 
of the Grhya ritual, the offering made to Pusan is performed on the threshold 
of the house.? It is Piisan who preserves cattle, who keeps them from falling 
into pits and finds them when lost and brings them again home.’ He guides 
straight also the furrow, guards horses, and weaves the coats of sheep. Cattle 
are sacred to him and he is called the producer of cattle. 

Piisan has also other than agricultural connexions. He is exclusively 
called the glowing (dghrni), and once bears the epithet, ‘ not to be concealed,’ 
which is almost peculiar to Savitr. With golden ships he moves in the aerial 
ocean, acting as Stirya’s messenger under the influence of love. As best of 
charioteers, he is said to have driven downwards the wheel of the sun. Like 
Surya too he is the wooer of his mother and lover of his sister : 4 the gods gave 
him ® to Sirya, the sun-maiden, for a husband. In the marriage hymn he is 
bidden to take the hand of the bride, to lead her away, and to bless her in her 
marriage. 

Piisan again plays a part of the ritual of death: he is entreated to conduct 
the dead to the fathers, as Agni and Savitr lead them to the place of the right- 
eous, and he conveys them in safety to their destined place. The goat 
of Pisan leads the horse when sacrificed to its place. 

The similarity of Pisan to Hermes is undoubted : ® both have in common 
the duty of conducting men or the souls of the dead on the roads: they are 
closely connected with the herds, confer wealth, act as convoys, are connected 
with the goat, and even the braided hair of Pisan has been compared with the 
Krobalos of Hermes.’? But it is impossible to lay much stress on the parallelism 
in view of the lack of similarity of name, and the difficulty of determining the 
original character of Hermes is much greater than that of determining that 
of Pisan. His name denotes the prosperor, and Yaska ® distinctly declares 
him to be the sun. This traditional interpretation is not inconsistent with any 
of his characteristics : it certainly accounts for his character as glowing, for his 
connexion with the sun-maiden, and his wealth: again it accounts for his 
power to show paths, from which it is not difficult to deduce his duty of con- 
ducting the souls or his going on errands. As the increase-giving sun, his close 
connexion with cattleis natural: Mithrain Iran, an almost undoubted sun-god, 
has the power to increase cattle, and bring lost animals home. The goat 
would be a natural animal to be associated with the god whose duty it was to 


1 AGS. iii. 7.9; CCS. iii. 4. 9. ® Von Schroeder’s objection (Arische Re- 
2 CGS. ii. 14. 9. ligion, ii. 11) is without substance. 
* RV. vi. 54. 7%, 10. In verse 1 there is Etymological connexion with Pan (W. 
referred to the prototype of the Khojis Schulze, KZ. xlii. 81, 374) is unproved. 
of the Punjab, skilled trackers of stolen 7 Siecke (Hermes der Mondgott and Pisan) 
cattle (Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 365). sees in both moon gods, but this is un- 
Cf. the Homeric Hymn. attractive. Giintert (pp. 41 ff.) treats 
4 RV. vi. 55. 5. him as the patron god of herdsmen. 


5 RV. vi. 58. 4. 8 Nir. vii. 9. 


108 The Gods and Demons of the Veda (Part II 


go on difficult pathways. As against this natural explanation it is difficult 
to take very seriously the theory that he is not the representative of any 
natural phenomenon, but-a god of the ways. Much of his nature can thus be 
explained, but not the close connexion with the prospering of cattle and of 
men which is clearly his, but which cannot without difficulty be deduced from 
his nature as a god of ways, though attempts to do so may have been known in 
the oldest times. The only explanation which is possible as an alternative 
is to regard Pisan as in origin an animal god, embodied in the goat, or a 
vegetation spirit which might be conceived in goat shape.? But in that case 
much of the mythology would remain wholly unexplained.’ 


§ 4. Visnu 


In the Rigveda Visnu can claim but five whole hymns, and his name 
occurs not more than a hundred times in all. He is said to be young, but 
vast in body, not a child, and his one action is the taking of three strides : 
hence he is called the wide strider. Of these strides two are visible, the third 
is beyond the ken even of the birds, or, as it is also put, his third name is in 
the bright region of the heaven. But again it is said that the liberal see the 
highest place of Visnu like an eye in the sky. The highest place is Visnu’s 
favourite dwelling, there also are the gods and pious men, there is Indra 
and the many-horned swiftly moving cows, doubtless the clouds. There can 
be little doubt as to what the three steps are: the later Samhitas, the Brah- 
manas, and Cakapini,* a predecessor of Yaska, agree in equating them with 
the three divisions of the universe, and the alternative view of Aurnavabha 
that they correspond with the rising sun, the zenith, and the setting is in flat 
contradiction with the references of the Vedas to the nature of the highest 
place. The motive for the strides is variously given as for men in distress, to 
bestow the earth upon man as a dwelling, to obtain wide-stepping existence 
or the existence of men. Again Visnu is essentially the swift of motion and 


1 Rel. des Veda’, pp. 234-7. RV. i. 155. 4; vii. 100. 3; hence 
2 e.g. the goat in the Dionysiac ritual : Hopkins (JAOS. xvi. p. exlviii) makes 
Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, v. 161— them from horizon to horizon. Venera- 
72; Greece and Babylon, p. 240. tion of the footstep appears in i. 22 and 
$ Hillebrandt (Ved. Myth. iii. 362 ff.) also 154; there is use in cult of the hoof 


agrees that Piisan was a sun-god, the 
special deity of a pastoral clan, the 
Bharadvajas; Perry, Drisler Memorial, 
pp. 241 ff. For various views of the 
nature of Hermes, see Murray, Four 
Stages of Greek Religion, pp. 74 ff. (primi- 
tive phallic stone); Farnell, Cults of 
the Greek States, v. 1 ff. (pre-Hellenic 
in character); Carnoy, Les Indo- 
Européens, p. 212 (in part a wind-god) ; 
Fox, Greek and Roman Myth., pp. 191 ff. 


‘ Nir. xii. 19. Rarely they are on earth, 


of the horse in the piling of the fire, and 
of the footprint of the Soma cow ; 
Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. ii. 80; i. 73; 
iii. 353. Localization of Visnu’s step 
in Nir. xii. 19 (IA. xlvii. 84) is specula- 
tive. BDS. ii. 5. 9. 10, where an 
extended list of Visnu’s names is given, 
is an obvious late interpolation as are 
the planets preceding. Cf. A. C. Das, 
Rig-Vedic India, i. 544 ff., against Tilak, 
Arctic Home in the Vedas, p. 328, who 
both drag Cipivista into the connexion. 


Chap. 8] Visnu 109 
an ordainer: he measures out the earthly spaces. He sets in motion his 
ninety steeds with the four names, an allusion clearly to the 860 days of the 
year, divided into four seasons. Heis a dweller on the mountains, and in the 
Yajurveda he is called the lord of mountains. 

Visnu is closely associated with Indra: one hymn is devoted to the pair 
of gods, and, when Visnu is celebrated by himself, Indra is the only other god 
who is given a place; when about to perform his supreme feat of slaying 
Vrtra, Indra implores Visnu to step out more widely. Through his association 
with Indra, Visnu becomes a drinker of Soma, and he cooks for Indra 100 
buffaloes and a brew of milk. Through his connexion with Indra Visnu also 
is associated with the Maruts, with whom he shares honour in one hymn, 

Another side of Visnu appears in the statement that he is a protector of 
embryos, and in his invocation with other deities to promote conception.? 
Moreover, in one obscure allusion, reference is made to the fact that in battle 
he assumed a strange form.’ 

There can really be little doubt as to the nature of the god. The name can 
be diversely explained as ‘ the active one ’ from the root vis, or as ‘ crossing the 
back of the world or the earthly regions ’ from vi and snu (akin to sdnu), but 
the solar nature of the deity is reasonably plain. In the Atharvaveda ‘ he is 
asked to bestow heat: in the Brahmanas 5 his head cut off becomes the sun ; 
in post-Vedic literature his weapon is a rolling-wheel, his vehicle Garuda, 
the sun-bird, and the breast jewel which he wears is clearly the sun. His 
dwelling in the mountains may be either derived from the conception of the 
sun on the cloud mountains, or, more simply, from the idea that he who 
dwells in the farthest distance must be on a mountain peak. The only 
alternative theory which requires mention is that of Oldenberg ® that he is 
merely the wide-stepping god, and this has no such probability as to displace 
the obvious meaning put upon his nature by Vedic India. 

It would be impossible to deny to Visnu the position of a great god in the 
period of the Rigveda, for that would be to forget that the comparative pro- 
minence of the gods is not necessarily brought out fully in that collection, 
which is mainly concerned with the Soma sacrifice, and which does not, there- 
fore, take great account of those deities who are not of much consequence in 
that sacrifice. Of course, that the god is not a great god of that sacrifice is to 
a certain extent a proof that he is not a god regarded with the highest impor- 
Sachen, i. 80) sees vi with suffix snu, 
2 RV. vii. 86.9; x. 184. the name designating the sun-bird 
* RV. vii. 100. 6. The epithet Cipivista, directly. 

there found and then in TS. ii. 4.5; ‘4 v. 26. 7. ICCB. xiv. 1. 1. 1 ff. 

iv. 4.9; vii.3.15; MS.ii.2.18,is very ° Rel. des Veda*, pp. 229-34. He is clearly 


uncertain in sense ; Hillebrandt, Ved. right in negativing the idea of Visnu 
Myth. iii. 356, n. 2; Keith, Taittiriya as connected with the souls of the dead 


. TS. ii. 4.5.1, 


Samhita, ii. 622 ; Hopkins, Epic Myth. 
pp. 211, 274. On the etymology, cf. 
Bloomfield, AJP. xvii. 427 ; Oldenberg, 
GN. 1915, p. 374. Bloch (Wérter und 


(K. F. Johansson, Solfageln i Indien 
(1916), pp. 8 ff.). Giintert (pp. 305 ff.) 
makes him an ithyphallie (¢ipi-vista) 
sun-god. 


110 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part IL 


tance by many of the priests.1_ But his interest in human life as a protector of 
embryos is a sign of his importance in ordinary life, which should not be over- 
looked. It is quite impossible to make such a detail the ground of the 
attribution to the god of any other than a solar character, for, as we have seen 
in the case of Piisan, the connexion of the sun with the increase of the animal 
world is too obvious an idea not to be found in religion. 

In the later Samhitas and the Brahmanas we find that Visnu is assuming an 
importance and prominence in the minds of the priests which give him, along 
with Rudra, undoubtedly the leading place in the living faith of the Brah- 
manas. His three strides are now definitely located in the earth, air, and 
heaven, and in imitation of them the sacrificer strides in the ritual the steps 
of Visnu,? which result in placing him in the world of heaven: by this simple 
act he thus puts himself in the closest connexion with the deity, for in the. 
imitation he doubtless in some measure and degree assimilated himself to the 
deity. It is of interest that in the Avesta the three steps of the AmeSa Spenta 
from the earth to the sun are similarly imitated, but there is no reason to 
assume that the two acts are historically derived from an earlier Indo-Iranian 
usage: such parallels may as easily rise independently. Moreover the three 
strides become a matter of great importance in the preservation of the world 
from the Asuras, who, in the imagination of the Brahmanas, are no longer 
individual enemies of the gods, but a strong band before whose onslaught the 
gods are often compelled to yield. The Indian imagination, however, never 
contemplates the idea of any final victory of the Asuras, but the gods are 
bound to repel them often by guile and still more often by knowledge of some 
special rite. Thus in the Aitareya Brahmana * it is agreed by the Asuras with 
Indra and Visnu that so much of the earth should be assigned to the latter 
as Visnu could step over with three strides: Visnu then proceeds to appro- 
priate by his strides the worlds, the Vedas, and speech. The Catapatha 
Brahmana * declares that Visnu by his strides acquired for the gods the all- 
prevading power which they possess, and the Taittiriya Samhita ° states that 
by taking the form of a dwarf, whom he had seen, Visnu conquered the three 
worlds. The dwarf form, which is the germ of the post-Vedic story of the 
dwarf incarnation of Visnu, is found, though not with express mention of the 
three steps, in the Catapatha.® It is there recorded that the Asuras overcame 
the gods and began to divide the earth: the gods with Visnu, the sacrifice, . 
at their head demanded a share, and the Asuras seeing that Visnu was but 
a dwarf consented to grant them so much as Visnu could lie on. The gods 
then sacrificed with Visnu, and won the whole earth to themselves. In this 
account is to be seen the most important factor in the elevation of Visnu to 


1 RV. i. 22. 16 ff.; 154-63; vii. 100 show view (Trans. Conn. Acad. xv. 41) little 
that to some he ranked higher. of Visnu. 

2 Keith, Taittiriya Samhita, i. p. exxvii. § j,2.5.1ff. Forthe later views, see Keith, 

Fig a Use Ind. Mythology, pp. 121 ff. ; Macdonell, 

+i. 9. 89. JRAS. 1895, pp. 168 ff. 


5 TS. ii. 1.8.1. The PB. makes in Hopkins’ 


Chap. 8] Visnu 111 


his rank of a most high god, his constant identification with the sacrifice. The 
precise train of thought by which this identification was reached cannot be 
reconstructed with certainty : it is not to be supposed that Visnu’s importance 
is accidental, or due merely to this identification : he must have been a great 
god both for the people and the priests before he was given the similitude to 
the sacrifice, the greatest of all things in the estimation of the priesthood, 
but his identification undoubtedly aided in the increase of that greatness, and 
made it permanent and abiding. 

In the dwarf form 1 thus assumed by Visnu there is no reason to see more 
than the natural adoption of a cunning device to deceive the Asuras, an idea 
perhaps prompted not only by the appropriateness of the form in question 
for the purpose aimed at, but by the common view of men that the misshapen 
form of the dwarf is accompanied by inhuman cleverness or power, an idea 
so widespread in the world that there need be no hesitation in believing it to 
have existed in Vedic India, despite the fact that, naturally enough in view of 
the scanty knowledge we have of many sides of Indian thought, we have no 
direct proof of the existence of such a view in Vedic times regarding dwarfs. 

The germ of a further incarnation of Visnu is found in the Brahmanas in 
the transformation of a myth, which is found in the Rigveda itself. In that 
text 2 it is recounted that, having drunk the Soma, Visnu carried off a hundred 
buffaloes and a brew of milk, which belonged to the boar, and Vrtra, shooting 
across the mountain, slew the boar. There can be no doubt that this is merely 
a version of the slaying of Vrtra, the great work of Indra in the world, and the 
mountain must be the cloud mountain. In the Taittiriya Samhita? the boar 
keeps the wealth of the Asuras concealed on the far side of seven hills : Indra 
picks up a bunch of Kuca grass and pierces the hills and slays the boar. 
Visnu, the sacrifice, then carried off the boar as a sacrifice for the gods, and 
thus the gods attained the goods of the Asuras. Now this boar, which is called 
Emisa from its epithet emusa, fierce, in the Rigveda, is stated in the Catapatha 
Brahmana ‘ to have raised up the earth from the waters, and the Taittiriya 
Samhita ° further identifies the cosmogonic boar which raises up the earth with 
a form of Prajapati. From this new aspect of the tale it is an easy step to the 
making of the boar an incarnation of Visnu himself, and this step is actually 
taken in the Ramayana and the Puranas. The transfer of myths from Pra- 
japati to Visnu is illustrated in an interesting way in the case of two other of 
his incarnations in post-Vedic literature. The fish, which according to the 
Catapatha Brahmana ® in the flood legend saved Manu, is identified in the 


1 The victim or sacrificial fee is often a Visnu is implausible; Oldenberg, Fel. 
dwarf animal; TS. i. 8. 8; ii. 1.3.1; des Veda’, p. 232. 
MS, 11. 5. 8; &e. The thumb at an’ * RV.i. 61.7; yiii.77. 10: 
offering to the Manes is pushed into * vi. 2. 4. 2, 3. 
the food with verses to Visnu in cer- ‘ xiv.1.2.11. 
tain cases (Caland, Altind. Ahnenkult, ° vii. 1.5.1. 
p. 188), possibly to drive away the ‘i. 8.1.1. 
Raksases; any real connexion with 


112 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


Mahabharata with Prajapati, but in the Puranas becomes Visnu, and, while 
in the Brahmanas ! Prajapati is stated to have become a tortoise, moving in 
the primeval waters, when about to create offspring, the Puranas turn the 
tortoise into an incarnation of Visnu, devised in order to recover various 
objects which were lost in the deluge. 

As the sacrifice Visnu is the subject of a strange myth: through com- 
prehending the issue of the sacrifice, Visnu became the highest of the gods : 
but this result caused Visnu to be unduly puffed up with glory, and yet his 
greatness was such that no god dared attack him. He was apart from them all 
with his bow and three arrows, leaning his head on the end of his bow. The 
ants ther undertook, on the promise of the reward of being able to find water 
even in the desert, to bring him to ruin, and this they accomplished by gnawing 
the bow string, so that the bow sprang asunder with great vehemence, and the 
head of Visnu was cut off, becoming the sun. The Taittiriya Aranyaka adds 
that the Acvins as physicians replaced the head of the sacrifice, and, as the 
gods were now able to sacrifice with it in its complete form, they conquered 
heaven. The mythis an odd and curious one, but to ascribe to it any symbolic 
sense would doubtless be a mistake. 

In the Aitareya Brahmana ® Visnu is declared to be the highest of the gods 
and Agni the lowest, but the declaration has no possible reference to the place 
of the two gods in the hierarchy, but is rather due to the physical situation of 
the gods, the terrestrial fire, and the sun. It accords also, somewhat artificially, 
with the fact of the arrangement of the litanies of the two gods in the Soma 
sacrifice, but it is not probable that originally that was its sense. The 
Aitareya also declares that Visnu is the doorkeeper of the gods, an idea which 
it supports very ineffectively by the Rigvedic verse,* Visnu with his friend 
opened the stall. 


§ 5. Vivasvant 


Vivasvant is not the subject of any complete hymn in the Rigveda, where, 
however, he is mentioned about thirty times. The most important thing 
about him is his relation to Manu, the ancestor of the human race, who thence 
bears the name Vaivasvata or Vivasvant, taking simply his father’s name as a 
sign of paternity. Men are also in the Brahmanas styled directly his offspring, 
and the Rigveda ascribes to him as to other gods the fathership of the gods. 
His wife is Saranyt, the daughter of Tvastr, and he is the father of the 
Acvins. To him and to Matari¢van Agni was first manifested, and he has 
Matari¢van or Agni as his messenger. Soma again dwells with Vivasvant and 
is cleansed by his daughters, doubtless, in the ordinary mythical style of the 


1 CB. vii. 5.1.5; JB. iii. 272 (Aktpara *i. 1. Visnu’s connexion with Varuna is 


Kacyapa). slight and artificial; TS. ii. 1. 4. 4; 
* CB. xiv. 1.1.1ff.; TA.v.1.1%.° Cf. the AB. iii. 38. 3; PB. viii. 8.63; AV. vii. 
same tale of Makha (=sacrifice), PB. 25. 


vii. 5. 6-16. Agni, Indra, and Rudra ‘ i.156. 4. 
are slayers of Makha. 


Chap. 8] | Vivasvant 113 


Soma hymns, his fingers. In the prayer of Vivasvant Indra rejoices, and 
places his treasure beside him. Varuna also is mentioned along with him. In 
one passage the worshippers of the Adityas pray that the well-wrought arrow 
of the god may not slay them before old age. In the Atharvaveda? he is said 
to protect from Yama. 

The seat of Vivasvant is a special feature of the god: it is mentioned 
five times : in it the singers praise the greatness of Indra or of the waters ; the 
gods and Indra delight in it, nor can it be doubted that it is meant, when it is 
said that a new hymn is placed in Vivasvant as a centre (ndabht). 

The word vivasvant is used occasionally as an epithet of Agni and Usas 
in the etymological sense of shining forth, which is specially appropriate in the 
goddess Dawn. The Catapatha Brahmana? explains the god Vivasvant’s 
name by the doctrine that he illumines night and day, which are connected 
with him in the Rigveda: it calls him Aditya, and this name is elsewhere 
found in the Yajurveda,‘ and in post-Vedic literature Vivasvant is a name of 
the sun. 

In the Yasna of the Avesta we find Vivanhvant, father of Yima, who is 
the first man to prepare the Haoma, the second being Athwya, and the third 
Thrita. The parallelism is perfect, for not only is Vivasvant the father of 
Yama, but it is said in one passage of the Rigveda * that Indra drank Soma 
beside Manu Vivasvant and Trita. From the parallelism it is possible to 
support the theory of Oldenberg,® which sees in Vivasvant nothing more or 
less than a deification of the first sacrificer, the ancestor of the human race. 
But the theory is, on the whole, somewhat inadequate to account for all that 
is said of Vivasvant. His connexion with the A¢vins, with Agni, and with 
Soma can be explained, as well as the importance laid upon his seat, by the 
theory that he is the sun, especially the rising sun. This also suits best the 
obvious etymological sense of his name. Further refinement of his essence, 
such as making him, with Ludwig,’ the god of the bright sky, or, with Barth,® 
the heaven of the sun, is hardly necessary. The god in any case bears the 
appearance of having lost much of his original colour and life. 


$6. The Agcvins 


The Agvins are, next to Indra, Agni, and Soma, the gods most frequently 
mentioned in the Rigveda, where they claim more than fifty hymns and are 
mentioned over 400 times. The most constant feature is their duplicate 
nature: they are compared to eyes, hands, feet, wings, and animals which 


1 RV. viii. 67. 20. 7 Rigveda, iii. 333; v. 392. 

? xviii. 3. 62. 5 Rel. of India, pp. 9,10. Hillebrandt (Ved. 
SEND. Asi ies as Myth., pp. 150 f.) holds that sometimes 
2 MS31.,6.012. his name is applied to the sacrificer 
5 viii. 52. 1. himself, e.g. RV. ix. 14. 5. 

6 


Rel. des Veda’, p. 122. 
8 [u.0.s. 31] 


114 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


go in pairs. They are bright, young, yet ancient, many-formed, beautiful, 
agile, strong, red, and they possess profound wisdom and power. Alone of 
gods are they described as having ruddy paths or golden paths. The epithet 
dasra, wondrous, is almost exclusively theirs, and they are called the 
Nasatyas, and once the encompassing Nasatya is mentioned alone. The 
sense of the epithet, which in the singular Naonhaithya is the name of a 
demon in the Avesta, is unknown: its great age is proved by its occurrence 
among the names of the gods of the Mitanni; naturally the Indian mind 
explained it as not untrue (na-asatya), but the value of such an etymology 
is obviously nil.1 

The Acvins are peculiarly connected with honey: they have askin of honey, 
the birds of their cars are full of honey; they bestrew the sacrifice and the 
worshipper with a honey whip, their car is honey hued and honey bearing. 
They are honey-handed and give the bee its honey. In comparison they are 
less vitally connected with Soma, though they are said to drink it at each 
pressing, and in some circles they were probably not at first reckoned among 
the Soma-drinking gods, though for this * the proof is rather inadequate. 

The chariot of the A¢vins has curious qualities : it is not merely golden in 
all its parts, but it is three-wheeled, has three fellies, and all its parts triple. 
One of its wheels is said to have come off when the Acvins went to the wedding 
of the maiden Surya, and it is possible that the three wheels are connected 
with the fact that, unlike other gods, the Acvins in their chariot bear with them 
Strya, for whom, therefore, there must be provided a third seat. Possibly 
too the triplication, of which much appears in the myths of the Acvins, owes 
its being to this simple cause, though it has been traced to the three seasons 
of the year. The steeds which draw their car are sometimes horses—there is 
no trace of the Acvins as horsemen—but more often birds, swans or eagles, 
occasionally buffaloes, and even a single ass : in the Aitareya Brahmana ® they 
are said to have won a race at the wedding of Soma and Sirya with a car 
drawn by asses. Their chariot in a single day traverses heaven and earth, 
a power attributed also to the chariots of the Dawn and the sun: it goes 
round the sun, and the epithet going round (parijman) is often given to their 
car or them, as also to Vata, Agni, and Sirya. 

The presence of the Acvins is ubiquitous: they are declared to be in the 
heaven, the air, in plants, houses, the mountain top, above and below. The 


* Cuny (Rev. ét. anc. 1909, p. 280) argues * Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. i. 241 ff. ; iii. 393, 


that the etymology is strengthened by n. 5. They are more prominent in RV. 
the mention of the gods in the treaty, v and vii than in vi. 

but at most this would only prove * iv. 7-9; ef. KB. xviii. 1; JB. i. 213 
the early existence of this conception. (where Usas herself shares in the race, 
Brunnhofer (Vom Aral bis zur Ganga, like Atalanta); Oertel, Trans. Conn. 
p. 99) suggests nas, *‘ save ’, asin Gothic Acad. xv. 174; possibly an echo of a 
nasyan. Connexion with nasa, ‘ nose’, marriage competition custom; see 
is implausible, though epic (Hopkins, below. 


Epic Myth., p. 169). 


Chap. 8] The Acvins 115 


time of their appearance, however, is par excellence the early dawn, when they 
waken Usas, or in their car follow after Usas, who is born at the yoking of 
their car. The appearing of the Acvins, the kindling of the fire of the sacrifice, 
the break of dawn, and the sunrise are even treated as simultaneous, but the 
normal place of the Acvins is clearly after the dawn and before the sunrise. 
In the Aitareya Brahmana! the Acvins, Usas, and Agni are stated to be 
the gods of dawn: they also receive in the ritual red-white animals in accor- 
dance with their own colour. On the other hand, they have both in the 
Rigveda and elsewhere offerings at midday and evening as well as at dawn, 
which, however, is their place par excellence, as they are the recipients of the 
morning litany, Prataranuvaka, for which the appropriate time is the period 
when the dawn has arisen. Their special connexion with the light is shown 
by the fact that they drive away the darkness and put to flight the evil 
spirits. 

The Acvins have many parents: they are children of Dyaus, but also the 
ocean is their mother ; they are the sons of Vivasvant and Saranyi, daughter 
of Tvastr, and they are the parents of Pisan and have the Dawn, as it seems, 
for their sister. But their more important relationship is with the maiden 
called Sirya or the daughter of Stirya. She is their wife and mounts their car, 
and she bears the name Acvini as the outcome of this relationship. But 
Sirya is also the wife of Soma, in which case the Acvins appear as groomsmen 
who seek the bride for the husband.? In this connexion they are at the 
marriage of mortals invoked to conduct the bride home to her husband on 
their chariot. Their connexion with marriage appears also in their being 
invoked with other deities to make the union fruitful. With this their feats 
agree: they make the barren cow to give milk, and they bestow a child on 
the wife of the eunuch. They bring lovers together and they give an old maid 
a husband. 

The power of the Agcvins as the helpers in time of trouble is extraordinarily 
often extolled: no other gods are so steadfastly helpful as they are. They 
differ in essential features from Indra, who is also a present aid to his devotees. 
Indra is the warrior god who helps his followers in battle and who brings them in 
safety across the streams as they advance to attack their enemy. The Acvins 
appear not to do combat, but to save those who are in distress of any kind. 
They are the gods who are connected with the ocean, and they rescue from it 
in ship or ships. Bhujyu, son of Tugra, was alone in the midst of the ocean in 
the darkness, or was clinging to a plank in the midst of the waves: the Acvins 
heard his supplications and rescued him in a ship of a hundred oars, with four 
ships, with a winged boat, with three flying cars with a hundred feet and six 
horses, with their headlong flying steeds, or with their chariot swift as thought. 
They are the physicians of the gods, and guardians and granters of immortality 
and freedom from disease. The old and decrepit Cyavana they released from 
his decrepitude and made him young again, and desirable to his wife. In the 

ear ba iy: 7 RV. x: 85. 95.263 
Q* 


116 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


Catapatha and Jaiminiya Brahmanas ! the tale is told at full length, and the 
centre of it is the magic water, in which Cyavana bathes and so recovers youth 
and beauty, a motive of world-wide fame. The same story seems to have been 
told of a certain Kali referred to in the Rigveda. To the young Vimada they 
brought as a wife Kamadyit, who seems to have been the wife of Purumitra : 
apparently in so doing they imitated the action of Aphrodite to Helen. 
Visnapi, like a lost animal, they found and restored to his father Vicvaka, 
their worshipper. They revived and saved Rebha who had been stabbed, 
bound, and cast into the waters, and abandoned as dead for ten nights and 
nine days.2, They brought Vandana out of a pit in which he lay as dead. 
From a burning pit they rescued Atri Saptavadhri, and placed him in a cool 
place, a feat once attributed to Agni, who may have been deemed to have 
acted through the Acvins. A quail was saved by them from the jaws of a wolf. 
At the prayer of a she-wolf they restored the sight of Rjra¢va who had slain 
for her to eat a hundred and one sheep. They cured Paravrj of his blindness 
and his lameness. To Vigpala—mare or maiden—whose limb was cut off in 
battle like the wing of a bird, they give aniron limb. Pedu received from them 
a strong steed dragon-slaying, and Kaksivant abundant blessings including the 
making to flow for him of a hundred jars of honey or wine from a strong 
horse’s head. Akin to this story is the legend that they placed on Dadhyaijic, 
son of Atharvan, a horse’s head, which then told them of the place of the 
mead of Tvastr. 

This is a formidable list of achievements and many more are given by name 
of the recipients in the Rigveda. For one and all explanations based on 
natural phenomena have been found : * thus the blind man is healed when the 
sun is released from the darkness—whether of winter, as Max Miiller holds, 
or the arctic, as Tilak, or the rains, as A. C. Das, and it may be that, in many 
of the incidents, there is more than the mere record of remarkable rescues of 
real men from misfortunes. There is not the slightest doubt that such rescues 
might give rise to traditions of the sort recorded in the hymns, but the explana- 
tion is one which cannot be given with certainty in all cases: the giving of an 
iron limb to a horse is a feat which no modern could accomplish, and, while 
it might be ascribed to the A¢vins in recognition of their great powers, still 
it is rather doubtful if this is enough to explain the incident, though the 


* CB. iv. 1.5; Hopkins, JAOS. xxvi. 45 ff. ; ii. 160) prefers the twelve nights of 
JB. iii. 120-8; V. Henry (Mythes the winter solstice, and suggests a 
naturalistes, p. 12) sees in him the Lettish parallel. 
setting sun and compares Sisyphos. * Various views are suggested by Myri- 
The RV. has Cyavana. Cf. Macdonell antheus, Die Acvins (Munich, 1876), and 
and Keith, Vedic Index, i. 244 f. since him many more have been put 

* On this mode of reckoning cf. Rhys, Celtic forward. Cf. Tilak, Orion, pp. 368 ff. ; 
Heathendom, pp. 360 ff. Conceivably Max Miller, Beitr. zu einer wiss. Myth. 
there is here a relic of a nine-day week, ii. 150 ff.; Baunack, ZDMG. 1. 268 ff. ; 
but the notion is isolated. Cf. von von Schroeder, Arische Religion, ii. 
Schroeder, Arische Religion, ii. 666. 441 ff.; A.C. Das, Rig-Vedie India, i. 


Max Miller (Beitr. zu einer wiss. Myth. 530 ff. 


Chap. 8] The Acvins 117 


suggestion that Vi¢pala is the first quarter of the new moon is no more plausible. 
The rescue of the quail from the mouth of a wolf and the slaying of 101 sheep 
by Rjracva are episodes also which seem mythical. But to recognize that 
there may be a mythical foundation to a story and to discover that foundation, 
when the episode is given in the form of a mere reference in a few words in the 
Rigveda, are totally different things, and it would be contrary to sound method 
to seek to penetrate the exact force of these legends: it is not difficult to 
interpret them, but the fatal objection to such attempts is that several ways 
of interpretation are always open, and that we have no standard of criticism 
by which to judge of the comparative merits of the different views. 

It is a different matter with the question of the essential nature of the two 
gods : while that is obscure, some effort to elucidate it is made requisite by the 
abundance of the material. In the first place, however, it is important to 
note that in part at least the Indo-European character of the deities is beyond 
all reasonable doubt : 1 there is a very famous Lettish myth which shows us 
the two sons—or one son—of a god who are helpers in time of need and 
who come riding on their steeds to woo the daughter of the sun for themselves 
or for the moon, just as in the Rigveda the Acvins are both wooers of the sun- 
maiden for themselves and also for Soma, the moon. Here the god or gods are 
also described as the morning star. In the Greek myth of the Dioskouroi 
and their relation to Helene we have a clear variant of the legend, and the 
Dioskouroi are of course par excellence the saviours of men, especially at sea.? 
Moreover, the evidence of Boghaz-K6i, as we have seen, proves the early 
existence of the Nasatyas,’ and makes it most probable that the Avesta knew 
them; before the reform of Zoroaster the Naonhaithya must have been great 
gods. This fact explains in great measure the obscurity of the mythic con- 
ception of the gods; they have in the course of transmission attained greater 
personality, and therefore the natural substratum of the gods is hard to 
recognize. 

The difficulty was fully known in the earliest period of Vedic interpreta- 
tion: Ydaska * gives as alternative views sky and earth, which is the view of 
the Catapatha Brahmana,° or day and night, or sun and moon, or two kings, 
performers of holy deeds. The last view is naturally that of Geldner,® who 
denies their connexion with the Dioskouroi and asserts that they are merely 
Indian saints who save in time of trouble, a view which is clearly based on 
a false effort to dissociate Indian from Indo-European mythology. The view 


1 Cf. the prayer of Alkaios in eleven-syllable in Tacitus, Germ. 43: Timaios in Diod. 
metre as in Vedic, E. Leumann, Buddha iv. 56. Cf. Helm, Altgerm. Rel. i. 321 ff. 
und Mahavira, pp. 8f.; Mannhardt, More distantly von Schroeder (Arische 
Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, vii. 312 it. Religion, ii. 404 ff.) compares the sacred 
Contra, Farnell, Greek Hero Cults, marriage of Zeus and Here, Jupiter and 
pp. 175 ff. Juno, «e. 


2 Cf. J. Rendel Harris, Essays and Studies * Nir. xii. 1. 
presented to W, Ridgeway, pp. 549-57. *® iv. 1. 5. 16. 
3 Germanic and Celtic parallels are alleged ° Ved. Stud. ii. 31. 


118 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


that the gods are sun and moon has the support of Ludwig, Hillebrandt,? 
and Hardy,’ but nothing else whatever can be said for it. The explanations 
as day and night and sky and earth have equally feeble support, and more 
plausibility attaches to the suggestion, perhaps made by Yaska and adopted 
by Goldstiicker, that the twilights are meant, the half-dark, half-light period 
before dawn, and this would account for the fact that one only is said to be a 
son of Dyaus. The more probable alternative to this view is that of Mann- 
hardt # and Oldenberg,® who, on the strength in part of the mention of the 
morning star and the evening star in the account of the Lettish god or gods, 
take the two gods to be the morning and the evening star respectively. The 
difficulty of this conception is, of course, the fact that the gods are so essentially 
twin, and the view, if adopted, necessitates the supposition that this fact had 
gradually been obscured. There are indeed some traces of their separate 
character in the Rigveda ° itself: thus they are called ‘ separately born ’ and 
‘born here and there’, and Yaska preserves a verse’ of which he says: ‘ One 
is called the son of night, the other the son of dawn.’ This is, it must be 
admitted, far from convincing evidence of a real recollection of the twin 
character of the stars, but the suggestion of Weber,® that they are to be taken 
as the twin stars of Gemini, is open to the quite fatal objection that there is 
nothing but the twin nature to commend it. Nor is the loss of the primitive 
connexion at all impossible, with the growing importance of the morning as 
the time of sacrifice.® 

A very different conception of the nature of the twins is suggested by 
Harris,?° whose collections of ethnic materials reveals the idea that of pairs of 
twins one is often held to have a divine origin, without there being any myth 
of nature involved. Whatever the value of the theory for other cases, it seems 
to have no special plausibility for Indian religion, in which the natural back- 
ground is clear, as it is in the Lettish myths, whose importance seems unduly 
to be depreciated by failure to realize the remarkable character of the 
parallels with the Indian legends. 

Other questions are suggested by the nature of the steeds of the Acvins. 
The conjecture that they were once not merely regarded as borne on chariots 
with horses, but were conceived as horses, can be supported by analogy: thus 
the sun is certainly called a horse, and the mother of the A¢vins is, according 


} Rigveda, iii, 34. 113) follows him. But see von Schroeder, 

* Ved. Myth. iii. 379-96. Arische Religion, ii. 445 ff. ; Fox, Greek 

5 Ved.-brahm. Periode, pp. 47-9. and Roman Myth., pp. 246 f.; Cook, 

4 Loc. cit. Zeus, i. 760 ff.; Giintert, pp. 253 ff. 

5 Rel. des Veda*, pp. 209-15. 10 The Cult of the Heavenly Twins (1906) 

PV er 4 Gas der L Ol cds and Boanerges (1913). 

ZONIP AR 1 Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, p. 211, n. 1, 

® Rajasiya, p. 100. suggests that the native legend may 

® Wide (Lak. Kulte, p. 316) denies the star have borrowed aspects from the magic 
character of the MDioskouroi, and powers ascribed by many peoples to 


Farnell (Greece and Babylon, pp. 112, twins as uncanny. 


Chap. 8] The Acvins 119 


to an old, if not Rigvedic, tradition, called a mare. Beyond this we cannot go, 
The fact that the chariots are also borne by birds is of some interest : are 
we to see in this fact, as suggested in another connexion of the Dioskouroi by 
S. Reinach,! a relic of a time when the Acvins were regarded themselves as 
birds, and in special swans ? It is clearly impossible to determine this with any 
security: there is no trace of such a view in the Vedic literature, and to 
conjecture it into that literature is, therefore, illegitimate, since it is not 
necessary thus to explain the fact that the chariot of the gods is borne by birds. 

The connexion of the gods with Sarya presents difficulties in that it is not 
at all clear what Sirya represents : Mannhardt ? suggests for her the Dawn, 
E. H. Meyer * the goddess of the clouds, while Oldenberg 4 thinks that Sirya 
means literally the sun-maiden as the feminine form of the sun, the alternative 
expression ‘ daughter of the sun’ being invented to remove the apparent in- 
consistency of the usage. It is difficult to feel any certainty as to this identi- 
fication: the fact that Soma is said to marry the maiden does increase 
the probability that she is the sun, but the further fact that Pisan also marries 
her makes the idea less likely. Ingenuity might also connect the legend of the 
victory of the Acvins in a chariot race at the wedding of Sirya to Soma as a 
trace of an older version, in which the Acvins were able to win her hand by 
showing their superior swiftness to the other wooers in a chariot race, and 
this idea would carry us into the sphere of conceptions which are seen in the 
Indian Svayamvara, but common sense forbids us to combine priestly 
speculations in this manner.? 


§ 7. The Goddess Dawn 


Usas the goddess is no small figure in the Rigveda: she is the subject of 
twenty hymns and is mentioned not less than 300 times in all, and the hymns 
addressed to her are among the most brilliant in the whole of the Samhita. 
The personification of the dawn is of the slightest description, and takes the 
form of picturing her as a maiden decked by her mother in gay attire, who 
reveals her bosom to mortal eyes. She is young, being born again and again, 


1 Cultes, Mythes et Religions, ii. 42-57. Themis, pp. 220 ff. Usener (Gétter- 


Cf. the bird form assumed by the 
Hotr when reciting the morning litany 
at the Atiratra, ACS. vi. 5. 4. 


namen, pp. 228, 229) compares the 
wedding of Soma and Sirya to that of 
Zeus and Here; see also von Schroeder, 


2 Op. cil., p. 295 ; so AB. iv. 7 f. 
8 Indog. Myth. ii. 673. 
Rel. des Veda®, p. 213; von Schroeder 


op. cit. ii. 392 ff. Hillebrandt (Ved. 
Myth. ii. 41f.) strongly supports Siirya 


o 


as Usas. 


(op. cit. ii. 414, n. 3) regards her as the 
young sun, who is renewed yearly and 
celebrates a fresh marriage. 


The legend of Pelops has, it is well known, 


of late led to the most remarkable 
speculations of annual victims, deter- 
mined as the result of races, by the 
Cambridge school of religion; see 


The apparent polyandry 
of Sirya in myth, not the wedding 
hymn, is clearly not to be taken as a 
refiex of human usage despite von 
Schroeder (op. cit. ii. 402); cf. the con- 
nexion of the morning and evening stars 
with the twilights, Gray, Myth. of All 
Races, iii. 325. Different ideas may 
easily lie at the bottom of the myths. 


120 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


and yet is ancient : she wastes away the life of mortals. She shines now, and 
shall shine in the future as in former days; she shines forth, shortening the 
days of men, the last of the days that have dawned, the first of those that 
have to come. Usas on her coming awakes to life men and animals: the 
birds fly up from their nest, and men seek their work. She illumines the 
ways, and drives away the spirits of darkness and evil: bad dreams she sends 
to Trita Aptya. She opens the gates of darkness as the cattle their stall, and 
she is called the mother of cattle. She is borne on a shining swift car drawn by 
steeds, or ruddy kine or bulls, perhaps the red rays of the light of morning 
rather than the red clouds of the morning: in a day she traverses thirty 
Yojanas. 

The Dawn stands in the closest relation to the sun, who follows her as a 
lover. She is the wife as well as the beloved of Sirya, but, as she precedes 
him as well as is followed by him, by another train of thought she appears as 
the mother of Sirya or yet again as created by him. She is also the sister 
of the Aditya Bhaga, the kinswoman of Varuna, and the sister, the greater 
sister, of night, from whom, however, she is also born, and who appears invoked 
jointly with her; both are mothers or wives of Strya or Agni.! Beyond all she 
is the daughter of Dyaus, and even once she appears as the beloved of heaven. 
With Agni she is closely connected, appearing before or with or after him 
as the fire lit for the morning sacrifice. She is the friend of the Acvins and 
is born at the yoking of their car: moreover, if she is Surya, she is also 
their wife. Once too, like Sarya, she is associated with the moon, which pre- 
cedes the dawns as the harbinger of day. Indra is said to have lighted up the 
dawn as is natural in the great finder of light, but once he appears as hostile and 
as shattering her car: * the myth is obscure, and has been variously inter- 
preted of the thunderstorm overwhelming the light of dawn, and as a victory 
of Indra bringing the sun over the dawn, which seeks to delay his advent. 
With the latter view may be compared the prayer that is once offered to her 
not to delay her coming, that the sun may not scorch her as a thief or an 
enemy.? Normally, however, the Dawn never infringes the law of order : 
she goes straight along her path and never misses her way. She awakes the 
devout man to sacrifice, and is besought to let the niggard sleep on. But, by 
the usual inversion of ideas, she is sometimes represented as being awakened by 
the worshippers. To her worshipper she brings wealth, long life, renown, and 
glory, to her and to the sun the dead man is said to go,* and the Fathers are 
seated in the lap of the ruddy dawns.°® 


1 Perhaps wives of Vivasvant; RV. x. a myth of nature; RV. i. 71. 5, 8; 
17. 1f.; Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. ii. Wile Ls) Ve 42d sXe LOn 1 sehen tia 
44-7. CB viol. 3: Gtistiiisaol tose Moonves 

RV sillel oe Oo 1V.POOuNSH il eextelosaols PAW ARE ad aR yi ih ety IVY 


73. 6. An Australian parallel is given * RV. v. 79. 9. 
by Lang, Custom and Myth, p.210. The ‘* RV. x. 15.9. 
Brahmanas have a tale of the incest ° RV. x. 15. 7. 
of Prajapati and Usas, apparently 


Chap. 8] The Goddess Dawn 125 


Throughout the conception of dawn there runs the multiplicity of the 
actual dawns on the one hand and the unity of the goddess on the other hand ; 
the poet here and there inclines to treat each dawn as a separate being, but 
this tendency is over-crossed by the unity of the substance of the deity. She 
is, of course, the Aurora of Rome and the Eos of Greece, but the parallelism 
is no proof of an Indo-European cult, and the Teutonic Ostara and the 
Lettish Uhsing represent rather a worship of the young sun in the spring. 

It would, of course, be an error to suppose that these hymns to Dawn are 
generically different from the other Vedic hymns: they are not in the 
slightest degree inconsistent with the position which in the ritual the goddess 
has assigned her: she in the morning before the birds begin to sing is invoked 
with other deities, but receives no share in the Soma drink. On the other 
hand, while in much of the poetry there is, as a result in part of this fact, a 
freedom from connexion with the details of the offering, the priests were well 
aware of the value of the Dawn to them as bringing the activity of the sacrifice, 
and ensuring them the largesse which they desired : hence it is not impossible 
that the epithet Daksina attributed in one passage to the goddess does directly 
identify her with the sacrificial fee, and reduce the dawn to the aspect of a 
valuable commercial asset.2 It would be wrong, therefore, to accept the view # 
that the worship of Dawn died out as the Vedic Indians wandered further 
south-east, as was long ago suggested by Weber. On the other hand, it is clear 
that this worship must have had a commencement, and that too in some place 
where the phenomena of nature are such as to evoke the real poetry of the 
Vedic descriptions of dawn; that this must have been in the Punjab is all but 
certain. This fact alone would suggest the early date of the Usas hymns, for 
the heart of the Rigveda was not, we may be certain, composed there, but 
rather in the later Kuruksetra country south of Ambala, where alone the 
phenomena, which are seen in the myth of Indra, appear in their full form.* 
In these later seats of Vedic civilization the goddess continued to receive her 
meed of praise, and hymns based on the old were composed for her, but the 
worship of the goddess was never of importance in the ritual. Hillebrandt’s ° 
theory that the Dawn celebrated in the Rigveda is the first dawn of the new 
year, is wholly unsupported by any evidence, and depends on a theory of the 
Rigvedic view of the year which is arbitrary. He identifies dawn with the 


1 Usas’s dance (RV. x. 29. 2) may be com- to be stalled in security from the cold, 
pared with the dance of the sun on asin Vend.ii.23; Vergil, Georg. iii. 352. 
Easter day in German and Slav ‘ Hopkins, JAOS. xix. 28 ff.; above, Part I, 
mythology ; von Schroeder, Arische Chap. 1. 

Religion, ii. 51 ff. For Celtic parallels, ° Ved. Myth. ii. 25 ff., followed by von 
see Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, pp. 299 f., Schroeder, Arische Religion, ii. 58 f. 
384 f., 456. For the fact that night in the Vedic 

* Bloomfield, Rel. of Veda, p. 71. conception preceded day see Keith, 

* Weber, Omina et Portenta, p. 351. Hille- JRAS. 1916, pp. 143-6, 555-60. Viraj 
brandt (Ved. Myth. ii. 38 f.) thinks that in AV. viii. 9. 1 may be dawn. For the 
the dawn cult is to be traced to a place dawns and Indra’s contest with Vala 


where winter conditions cause the cattle see Chap. 9, § 1. 


122 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


Ekastaka, which falls in the dark half of the month Magha, and is connected 
with the Manes, but this is purely arbitrary. Nor is there any force in Brah- 
mana assertions of Usas as wife of the year and wife of the seasons. 


§ 8. Zhe Moon 


Apart from his connexion with Soma,? the moon is not prominent in the 
Vedic literature, unless with Hillebrandt we recognize him under such guises 
as that of Brhaspati, Apam Napat, Varuna, Yama, Naracansa, or Tvastr, or 
Vicvartipa. He appears rarely in conjunction with Sirya in the compounds 
Stryamasa and Siryacandramasa, but little is said of the pair beyond noting 
their alternate appearance, which is once attributed to Brhaspati, their 
creation by the creator, and the fact that they are the two bright eyes of 
Varuna.? The birth of the moon from the sun is recognized, as well as its 
regular death.4 The connexion of the moon with the mind is early recorded,*® 
and may stand in relation to its connexion with the Fathers.* In addition to 
the influence of the moon on vegetation, its connexion with the tides is 
recognized.” The moon phases also receive some degree of worship,® and the 
darkness in the face of the moon is accounted for in various ways.® The 
Jaiminiya Brahmana? already records the existence in the moon of a hare, 
identified with Yama, whence the later name of Cac¢in, a view corresponding to 
the occidental belief in the man in the moon. Among other identifications 
Prajapati appears once equated with Candramas, but the more normal view 
is found in the idea of the Kausitaki Brahmana that from the asceticism of 
Prajapati there sprang up five beings, Agni, Vayu, Aditya, Candramas, and 
Usas. Another passage tells that the first four of these deities made good the 
members of Prajapati when the work of creation exhausted him and he fell to 
pieces.11 

Much stress has of late 12 been laid on the moon as the source of many 
myths which appear in our texts in connexion with the sun; thus the ritual 


1 CB. vi. 1.8.8; MS.ii. 18.10. For Tilak’s nexion cf. Plutarch, de facie in orbe lunae, 
theory of a polar dawn see Arctic Home 28, pp. 948 A, 943 C; Iamblichos, V. 
in the Vedas, pp. 82 ff., and a refutation P.82. The moon is the place, eye, light 
in A, C. Das, Rig-Vedic India, i. 890 ff. of the Fathers, KB.i.2; MS. iv. 2.1; 

* See below, Chap. 10, § 8. For Iran, see CB. ii. 4. 2. 2. 

Herodotos,i.131,and for other religions, 7? AB. vii.11. For the origin of rain from 
von Schroeder, Arische Religion,ii. 459 ff. the moon, see AB. viii. 28. 15 ; Darme- 

5 RV. i. 102.2; x. 68.10; 190.38; viii. 41. steter, ZA.ii. 308; Pliny, N.H. xx. 1. 
Orel keel Op S See below, Chap. 11, § 9. 

* AV.xi.5 (Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth.i.471f.); | ° The offering-place on the earth is placed 
RV. x. 55. 5 (where Soma is clearly in the moon, VS. i. 28; (B.i. 2. 5. 8 f. 
the moon); TB. ii. 5. 7. 38. SoRN ast s 


® RV. x. 90. 13 (moon born from mind); ™ CB.vi.1.3.16; KB.vi.1; TB.ii.3.6.1. 
AA. ii. 4.1; BAU.i. 3.16 ; iii. 2. 18. 22 Von Schroeder, Arische Religion, ii. 559 ff. ; 

6 Stereotyped in BAU. vi. 2; CU. v. 10; F. Schultze, Psychologie der Naturviélker, 
see below, Chap. 28, § 10. For this con- pp. 318 ff. 


Chap. 8] The Moon 123 


use of swinging has plausibly been regarded as unnatural as a sun rite, but 
easily explicable as one derived from the moon ; the conception of the sun as 
a boat or a vessel stands in a similar relation, while in German mythology 
such Indian beliefs as the hare in the moon, and the ceremonial striking of the 
calves with a fresh twig to produce milk in connexion with the new and full 
moon offerings, appear transferred to the sun. The importance of the moon 
in early times as giving the means of measuring time is insisted upon, and 
even the connexion of the fish with fertility is traced to the apparent con- 
nexion of shape between the fish and the sickle of the moon. These con- 
jectures, fortunately, need not be seriously considered in regard to Vedic 
mythology; if they have any validity, they refer to a period distinctly earlier 
than the religion of the Veda. 

It is probable in any case that the question is not one of the super- 
session of a moon mythology by a sun mythology, but of simple contamination. 
If we hear that in the highest step of Visnu there is the well of the mead,! it is 
not necessary to bring into connexion with this the Lettish legend of the foot- 
print of the horse in which Uhsing, god of the spring sun, brews beer, and to 
suggest that there was an Indo-European myth which saw in the marks on the 
moon the footprint of a steed, the conclusion ultimately being drawn that 
behind both Visnu and Uhsing we have a moon deity. The mead is from 
the heaven, Visnu’s highest step is in the heaven ; the combination of ideas is 
thoroughly in the spirit of the Vedic imagination. Or again Agni’s flight into 
the waters,? and assumption of animal forms therein, are easily enough 
explained from his character as the lightning from the clouds, and we are not 
really helped by the suggestion that the myth goes back to the loss of light 
when the moon disappears, the theriomorphic conception being due to the 
sickle shape of the moon which suggests a fish,* naturally equated with the 
salmon form in which Loki evaded his pursuers, or even the Dolphin shape of 
Apollo. Agni, after all, is not conceived as a fish, and the imaginative efforts 
required to introduce the moon suggest that the whole suggestion of the im- 
portance of the moon is greatly exaggerated. The moon by its waxing and 
waning doubtless was of great importance in fixing times of offering, but in 
India at least it is difficult to see how fundamental importance could be 
attached to this figure in comparison with the vital energy of the sun. The 
ethnic evidence for the importance of the moon is valuable,* but it is idle to 
suppose that every religion has developed on parallel lines and we may believe 
that Indo-European religion, owing perhaps to the place of its development, 
was less than some others inclined to make much of the moon. 


a RV. 1. 154. 5. ; Heidentum, pp. 137 ff., 288 ff. 

2 See below, Chap. 10, § 1. * See Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth., pp. 18 ff. ; 

* Von Schroeder naturally finds here an ex- Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, pp. 672 f. 
planation of the Christian fish symbol, For Germany see Caesar, B. G. i. 50; 
discussed by Scheftelowitz, Archiv fiir Helm, Aligerm. Rel.i. 257 f. ; for Rome, 
Rel. xiv. 1-58, 321-92; Cumont, Die Wissowa, Rel. der Rémer*, p. 815 ; Fox, 


orientalischen Religionen im rémischen Greek and Roman Myth., pp. 244 f. 


CHAPTER 9 
THE GREAT GODS—AERIAL 
§ 1. Indra 


InpRA is the greatest god of the Rigveda, with the solitary exception of 
Varuna, who may be deemed to equal him in might. His connexion with the 
Soma offering is, however, far closer than that of Varuna; he is the subject 
of 250 hymns, or almost a quarter of the whole of the collection, and he 
shares with other deities at least fifty more. He is, however, like Varuna in 
one thing: he is not a god whose physical nature overwhelms the anthropo- 
morphism of the poets : he has, therefore, become the subject of many myths, 
which it would be idle to seek to bring into any connexion whatever with the 
normal basis of his nature. 

Of the personal appearance of Indra a much more vivid picture is given 
than of any other of the gods: he has head, arms, hands, and a great belly 
which he fills full with the Soma, so that it comes to be likened to a lake. His 
lips are often mentioned: his beard is agitated when he moves, and, like his 
hair, it is tawny ; his arms are long and strong, as becomes the wielder of the 
bolt, and he can assume any form at will. His favourite weapon is the 
thunderbolt,” of metal or of gold, with four or a hundred angles, with a 
hundred or a thousand points. His is par excellence the epithet vajrin, 
‘bearer of the bolt’, which is else given but once each to Rudra, the Maruts, 
and Manyu. When he bears a bow, his arrows are hundred-pointed and 
winged with a thousand feathers. He has also a hook with which he gives 
wealth or fights, and the Atharvaveda ? gives him a net wherewith to over- 
come his foes. His chariot is drawn by horses, normally two, but sometimes 
a thousand or eleven hundred: their hair is like peacock’s feathers. His 
favourite food is the Soma, which he drinks on the very day of his birth, and of 
which he consumed three lakes when seeking to slay Vrtra: on yet another 
occasion he drank thirty lakes. The epithet Soma-drinker is so essentially his 
that it is given only to Vayu apart from him, and a few times to Brhaspati and 
Agni, when associated with him. His connexion with Vayu in this regard 
is close: he is said to have Indra for his charioteer. Indra, however, also 
drinks milk mixed with honey, and is partial to buffaloes, eating as many as 


1 For his parallelism with Thorr, see Mann- kles und Indra (1914). See also B. 
hardt, Germ. Myth., pp. 1ff.; von Schweitzer, Herakles (1922). 
Schroeder, Arische Religion, ii. 625 ff.; * In the epic Indra has the boomerang 
Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, pp. 291 ff. ; (MBh., iii. 809. 24), as also Thorr. 


with Herakles, von Schroeder, Hera- * viii. 8. 5-8. 


Chap. 9| Indra 125 


100 or even 300. He also eats cakes and grain, of which his horses likewise 
partake. . 

The birth of Indra is mysterious, like that of other heroes ; he declines to 
be born save through his mother’s side:1 this may be interpreted 2 as the 
lightning bursting through the cloud, or it may be merely treated as one of the 
many cases of miraculous births, which may be ascribed to nothing more than 
popular fancy, and of which the birth of Athene is on one view a famous case. 
His mother is called once a cow, and he is styled a calf: once * she is called 
Nistigri, identified by Saéyana with Aditi. Twice she is styled Cavasi, as he is 
the son of strength (gavas). The Atharvaveda * makes her Ekastaka, daughter 
of Prajapati, which is of course merely speculation. His father is Tvastr or 
Dyaus, and a legend ® clearly indicates that, in order to obtain the Soma, 
he seized his father by the foot and slew him : perhaps for this reason we find 
one clear record of the hostility of the gods to Indra. Only late speculation ® 
makes him the oldest, or the favourite, son of Prajapati, while with Agni he 
springs from the mouth of the giant in the Purusastikta. Agni and Pisan are 
made his brothers, and his sons once occur, but without indication who they 
are; he has, however, a son Kutsa, produced from his thigh and precisely like 
him, in the Jaiminiya.? His wife is Indrani, but the Aitareya Brahmana § 
gives him two wives, Sena and Prasaha, who are clearly legendary; the regular 
post-Vedie wife, Caci, daughter of Puloman, is clearly derived from his 
epithet ¢acipati, ‘lord of strength’, understood as husband of Caci, a meaning 
which Pischel ® vainly reads into the Rigveda. She definitely appears in the 
Jaiminiya Brahmana in a curious legend in which Kutsa Aurava, born of 
Indra’s thigh and his double, lies with her and is marked by Indra to distin- 
guish him. But another tale alluded to in the Atharvaveda”® tells how in love 
of an Asura woman, the Danavi Vilistenga,1 he went to live among the Asuras, 
assuming a female form among women, a male among men. Here perhaps 
should be reckoned his invocation as Mena, ‘ wife ’ or ‘ daughter’ of Vrsanacva 
in the Subrahmanyad.@ A vulgar tale * records how, as Sumitra, he had 


1 RV. iv. 18. 1-2. son of Su¢ravas, his Purohita, who does 

? Macdonell, Ved. Myth., p. 56; cf. Carnoy, sacrifice to him; at Sucravas’ entreaty 
Les Indo-Européens, p. 196; contra, Indra revives him. That RV. iv. 16.10 
Hartland, Legend of Perseus, i. 71 ff. ; knows this legend (Caland, Over en uit het 
Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, p. 132, n. 3; Jaiminiya-brahmana, p. 74) is dubious. 
Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 409; Fox, iii. 22. 7. 
Greek and Roman Mythology, p. 170. ® Ved. Stud. ii. 52. Cf. Bloomfield, ZDMG. 

*RYV.x. 101012; Kor Cavasi,jsee RV. vill. xi viii. 548 ; JB. iii. 199-202. 
Re UM ip 10 vii. 38. 2. 

4 iii. 10. 12, 13. 11 Weber, Ind. Stud. iii. 479 ; Oertel, JAOS. 

5 RV. iv. 18. 123; iii. 48. 4. xix. 120. 

¢ TB. ii. 2.10.1; CB. xi. 1.6.14; PB. *™ Cf. Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. ii. 209; JB. 
xvi. 4 ff. ii. 79; CB. iii. 3. 4. 18. 

7 iii. 199; this legend is aetiological and *™ JB. i. 162f.; PB. xiii. 6. 9 ff.; Oertel, 
curious ; Kutsa is spared by Indra Actes du Onziéme Congrés Int. des 
despite his act in posing as him to Caci, Orient. i. 225 ff., who cites RY. ix. 101. 


but refuses him sacrifice and kills the 1. He appears as an aged dancer, with 


126 The Gods and Demons of the Veda (Part II 


intercourse with Dirghajihvi, an Asura woman, who licked the Soma and 
had unlimited organs of sex. 

Of the other gods Indra is closely connected with his troop, the Maruts, 
with Agni whom he generates or finds in the waters, and to whom he is akin in 
nature, with Varuna, Vayu, Soma, Brhaspati, Pisan, and Visnu, whose 
relation to him becomes in some passages a close one. With Sirya he is 
actually here and there identified, he receives the epithet Savitr, and the 
Catapatha Brahmana! declares him to be the sun and Vrtrathe moon. But he 
differs from all the gods in his physical magnitude which makes the two worlds 

‘but half of him, heaven and earth insufficient for his girdle, and ten earths not 

equal to him. No language is too strong for the Vedic poets in expressing his 
greatness: Sirya and Varuna are made inferior to him, he is invoked to 
destroy the foes of Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman, he makes broad space for the 
gods in battle: he is an independent ruler par excellence, and occasionally, 
like Varuna, a universal ruler. He is the mighty (¢akra), an epithet rarely 
used of any other god. He practically alone is styled ‘ of a hundred powers ’ 
(catakratu) ; he is strong, young, immortal, and ancient. 

There is nothing here to show clearly the nature of Indra, save in so far 
as his connexion with the sun and the fire suggests his fiery character, and that 
with Vayu his fierce onset. But the myth of the slaying of Vrtra, which is 
the great deed of the god, is not doubtful in sense. It takes the form of the 
slaying by the god with the aid of the Maruts and of Visnu, or without their 
aid, of a serpent which was lying on the mountains keeping in with its coils 
the waters of the streams. The flood of the waters flows then swiftly to the sea, 
and at the same time the light shines forth. The god strikes Vrtra on the back, 
or smites his face, or pierces his vital parts. But the action is not done once, 
but ever and again, and Indra is implored to perform it in the future as in the 
past. The waters set free are likened often to lowing cows, and such is the 
fury of the onset that the heaven and earth tremble with fear. It is important 
to note that the terms used of the myth are essentially restricted with very 
rare exceptions to the words, bolt, mountain, waters, or rivers, in place of 
lightning, clouds, and air. The cows which occur here and there are open to two 
interpretations ; they may be simply the waters, for in a few cases the waters 
are clearly so designated, as when it is said that the cows roared at the birth 
of Indra. But they may also be the rays of light, set free when the waters are 
loosened. 

In the view of Oldenberg ? the use of the terms mountain and streams is 
proof that in the Vedic period the poets conceived the deed of Indra as the 
setting forth from mountains on earth of streams terrestrial, the invaluable 


a yoke on his shoulders, supporting a ' Cf. Hillebrandt, op. cit. iii. 44. For 


basket of cakes and a pot of curds and Vrtra’s distinction in the Brahmanas 
butter, to Upama, wife of Ksatra, a ef. Hopkins, Trans. Conn. Acad. xv. 
presage of victory in battle; JB. iii. 43 f. 


244 ff. * Rel. des Veda’, pp. 137 ff. 


Chap. 9] Indra 127 


waters of the Punjab: he grants that in the oldest period the myth was one 
of the thunderstorm, the fall of rain, and the coming of the light.1_ But, while 
he admits that this view of the myth was perfectly well known to Yaska and to 
the later literature, he denies that it was appreciated by the Vedic poets. 
This is, however, difficult to accept ; the arguments adduced for it are not by 

“any means conclusive. The absence of direct mention normally—occasionally 
there is such mention as Oldenberg admits—is due to the fact that the story is 
amyth ; it has passed the stage when it is merely a description of phenomenon, 
and it is not only a myth but a very popular myth. Moreover, it is impossible 
to accept the view that Vajra, the name of the bolt, is not the thunderbolt, 
which it is throughout the Vedic literature, often in quite clear fashion. The 
comparison of mountains with clouds is natural and easy : the mountains 
are the clouds, which before the storm hang in heavy darkness refusing to 
yield the rain: the storm comes, the lightning bursts forth, the rain falls, and 
the sun shines out. A different view is suggested by the theory of Hillebrandt 2 
which sees in the story of the contest with Vrtra, not the storm-god bringing 
down the rain to earth, but the defeating of a serpent demon, the glacier 
which with the winter cold holds fast the waters in ice.* The suggestion 
is brilliant and attractive, and, if such a glacial myth existed, it would clearly 
be natural to find its remnants in the tale of Vrtra, but the evidence which can 
be adduced from the language of the Rigveda is of the most inadequate nature 
to prove the thesis desired. 

The slaying of Vrtra is not merely attributed to Indra: by the syncretism 
of the Veda, it is also attributed to Agni and Soma. The gods as a whole are 
supposed to aid Indra in the contest, but at the roaring or hissing of the serpent 
they fled, leaving the Maruts only to aid him, and once at least even they fled, 
and left him alone. Visnu is also an aider in the struggle and even earthly 
priests lend aid. 

Another myth tells of the slaying of the three-headed Vi¢vartipa by Indra: 4 
it is, however, clear that this is a more modern form of a myth in which 
Vicvartiipa was slain by Trita, for this form of the myth appears in the 
Rigveda, and in the Avesta Thraétaona is said to slay a three-headed serpent 
with six eyes, freeing thus two fair ladies. In the classical myths of Herakles 
and Geryoneus, and of Hercules and Cacus, the monsters have likewise three 
heads, and, when slain, the hero wins the cattle which they have taken and 


1 Cf. the Avestan demon Apao§a, really Gotamas who won acceptance by the 
allied verbally to Vrtra ; Wackernagel, Bharadvajas as war-god, and became 
Festschrift Kuhn, pp. 158 f.; and Helm, generally revered as a great god. Giin- 
Altgerm. Rel. i. 192 ff. tert (pp. 11 ff.) makes him a war-god 

* Ved. Myth. iii. 174-201; (KI. Ausg.), and demon-slayer. 
pp. 85 ff. Cf. Barth, Rev. de Vhistoire * Von Schroeder (op. cit. ii. 613) compares 
des rel. Xxxix. 69; Bloomfield, Rel. of Thorr’s relation to ice and glaciers. 
Veda, pp. 178ff. Hopkins (JAOS. ‘ Hillebrandt (Ved. Myth. i. 531-5) holds 
xxxvi. 242 ff.) finds in Indra a deity of that Vi¢variipa is the moon in its 


fertility, originally of the Kugikas and hostile aspect. 


128 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


hidden away. The motive of winning cows is found also in the Vi¢varipa 
myth, and it is perfectly clear that these four myths are one and the same in 
nature: in the case of the Avesta the part of restoring lost cattle has past over 
to Ahura himself, who is par excellence the discoverer of lost things. 

With this myth may be compared the legend ! of Sarama and the Panis. 
The Panis stole and hid away cows in a cave among the rocks, and Indra’s 
dog, Sarama, pursues them and finds the place where are the cows : them she 
demands back from the Panis in a dialogue which is preserved to us in an 
interesting, if not very old, hymn of the Rigveda. The Panis refuse to give 
them back and the later tradition makes Sarama unfaithful to her mission. 
This, however, is not recorded in the Rigveda, and from other accounts it 
seems that Indra advances against the Panis and recovers the cows. More- 
over, we find Brhaspati engaged in the same feat: the priestly god with his 
prayers cleaves the barriers behind which the cows are hidden, and brings 
them forth. Agni too takes a share in the struggle: the priestly god of fire is 
naturally active in this important undertaking. The Angirases also take a 
great part, or, in their place, the seven seers, the eponymous fathers of the 
priestly clans. They pray and they offer sacrifice, and thus attain the same 
end. A further element in the picture of Vala: Indra cleaves his ridge in 
attaining the cows. The meaning of the myth can hardly be doubtful when 
it is noted how often Indra is brought into prominence as the maker of the 
dawn and the finder of the sun. The cows must be, not rain-clouds, as some- 
times in the myth of Vrtra, but the morning beams of light, or perhaps the red 
clouds of dawn ; there is little difference between the two conceptions. The 
nature of Vala, ‘ the Keeper’, is clearer still: he is merely the personifica- 
tion of the place in which the cows are kept. But the Panis are not quite so 
easy to explain: Hillebrandt? has found in them an historical people, and has 
argued that the mention of the Panis is a piece of history turned into myth. 
It is perfectly possible that this could be the case, but in the case of the Panis, 
who are assimilated to Parnians, the references are not satisfactorily taken as 
historical in ultimate essence: the theory too involves speculations regarding 
the places in which the Rigveda was composed which will not stand very close 
investigation. The natural and satisfactory view is that the Panis were the 
misers, who refuse to give the priests gifts, and who are overthrown, a con- 
ception which is interwoven with the mythical winning of the clouds. 

A further question, however, arises as to the exact circumstances in which 


1 RV. x. 108. Oldenberg (Rel. des Veda’, in Sarama, and sun and moon in the 


p- 147) treats the legend as an aetio- 
logical myth to explain men’s owner- 
ship of cows. A similar view of the 
waters myth is also unlikely. Rhys 
(Celtic Heathendom, pp. 299 ff.) holds 
him a culture hero, but admits con- 
tamination with Trita or Dyaus. 


* Ved. Myth. i. 83-116; he finds the dawn 


Sarameyas, and so with Saranyi 
(ii. 48-50). 


* Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Index, i. 


471-3. Meyer (Gesch. des Alt. I. ii. 
p- 905) also rejects Hillebrandt’s view, 
which is repeated in Ved. Myth., pp. 95 f. 
See Oldenberg on RV. vi. 61.1; GGA. 
1914, p. 447. 


Chap. 9] Indra 129 


the clouds are won, Is it to be supposed that the legend is only another side 
of the winning of the light in the Vrtra legend, which means, no doubt, the 
appearance of light after the thunderstorm ? The answer to this question 
is usually given in the affirmative, but it seems much more likely that the 
myth is an independent one, the winning of the sun and the dawn from the 
dark mountains of the night, as is the view of Oldenberg. To suppose that 
this is a secondary development from the other myth is not necessary, nor 
very probable. But it is impossible to follow Oldenberg in the view that the 
winning of the light and the sun, which is connected with the Vrtra myth, is 
not an expression of the recovery of the light after the storm, but a poetical 
embellishment of the theme. 

While it is in these mythical forms that the feats of Indra as bringing down 
the rain and finding the light are mainly celebrated, there are passages in 
which he is credited with creating the lightnings and turning the waters 
of heaven downwards, and very much more freely is his feat of winning the 
dawn and the sun celebrated. Such a god was clearly essentially suited to be 
the god of the warrior, and Indra is the great aider of the Vedic Indian, the 
Aryan, in his fights, whether with other Aryan foes, or more often in the 
tradition with the Dasas or Dasyus, in whom we must often see the aborigines. 
It would be wholly impossible to believe that in every case the Dasas are 
human enemies, and they include doubtless evil spirits who are none other 
than the gods of the hated races : twice in the Rigveda! we find phallus wor- 
shippers regarded as hostile, and everything points to the probability of such 
deities being among the enemies overthrown by Indra in the Rigveda. But, 
equally obviously, historical men may be reckoned as among the foes of the 
gods, and invested with traits of demons. Or again they may simply be men- 
tioned as defeated by Indra, as princes whom we have no reason to doubt as 
Aryan are represented as being defeated for another prince by the aid of the 
god, as when for Tirvayana, Ayu, Atithigva, and Kutsa are overthrown. 

The hostile Dasas or Dasyus are regarded as black skinned * and noseless, 
doubtless a reference to flat noses, but their chief characteristic, and the one 
which makes them no real men, is their refusal to worship the Aryan gods, and 
to give gifts to the priest, the two essential duties of the true Vedic warrior. 
Of the princes favoured by Indra the greatest, or one of the greatest, is Atithigva 
or Divodasa, ‘ the servant of the heaven ’, whose name has wrongly induced 
Hillebrandt * to treat him as a Dasa and to find the Dasas among the Dahae, 
instead of among the aborigines of India itself. Among his foes are men with 
names like Karafja and Parnaya,* whose appellations seem very possibly 
aboriginal, and above all Cambara. That foe has forts, ninety or ninety-nine, 


1 vii. 21.5; x. 99.8; above, p. 10, n. 3. the Vaikhanasas, whom Indra revives, 
2 Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Indea, i. 356 ff. PB. xiv. 4.7; JB.iii. 190. The dolphin 
% Ved. Myth. i. 96, 106 ff. ; iii. 269 ff. See (Carkara Cincumara) alone refused 
Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Indez, i. Indra, praise but was forced to yield by 
347 ff. Parjanya drying up his ocean, JB. iii. 
4 Mysterious is Rahasyu, who slays the seers, 193 f. 


9 [n.0.8. 31] 


130 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part IL 


or a hundred, and with the aid of Indra he destroys them and defeats him in 
his home in the mountains. Mythical these references may of course be, and 
clouds be meant, but it is quite as easy to see in them the real palisades of the 
aborigines stormed by Aryan princes, and their pursuing their enemy to the 
hills in which as always the defeated forces from the plains take refuge. 
Cambara is also defeated by Indra for the sake of Rjigvan, son of Vidathin. 
He also lulls to slumber and to ruin Cumuri and Dhuni for the sake of Dabhiti, 
and this reference may not inaptly be applied to an attack on the enemy made 
by night when the camp was wrapped in slumber.! Another foe overcome by 
Indra is [libica: his name like that of Pipru and of other of Indra’s foes 
seems un-Aryan. 

In other cases there may be a more mythic basis. The demon Urana is 
described as having ninety-nine arms which is rather inhuman : ? Arbuda is so 
little specified as to be of doubtful origin. Cusna seems from his name to be 
the hisser,* in which case he would have analogies with Vrtra, whose snorting 
(evasatha) so frightens the gods that they run away, leaving Indra to fight 
alone with the monster. He is also called a wild beast 4 and he seems to be 
horned, which may of course merely refer to the head-dress of a chief of the 
aborigines. His chief rival is Kutsa, who appears as battling against him, and 
as victor by the aid of Indra, who for his sake tore from the sun a wheel, pro- 
longing the daylight and thus enabling, it may be assumed, Kutsa to turn the 
issue of battle. The feat of Indra is several times mentioned, and the fact that 
Kutsa is a real hero is suggested, though not proved, by the fact that elsewhere 
he appears in hostile relation to Indra,* just as Atithigva, who is normally the 
protégé of Indra, in one or two places appears in the reverse relation. It is true 
that it is not to be expected that a god, or a hero of divine dimensions, would 
be thus placed in opposition to the god, though, as the god is the uncertain 
Indra, the argument is by no means conclusive. Kutsa in the case of his real 
personality must be a king, and this is not inconsistent with his being called a 
seer: royal seers are not unknown. The Jaiminiya Brahmana makes him 
born from Indra’s thigh and disloyal to him. No other god has anything like 
the same place as Indra in the overcoming of the Dasas for the sake of the 
Aryans: the feat is ascribed elsewhere only to Agni, the Acvins, and the 
gods generally. 

Other Dasas are certainly not real men; such are Vyanca, whose jaws 
Indra struck off, and Namuci, who is the hero of a strange tale ;* Indra, it 


POLUV i Aleut Ono. Marica. 

PRA 2 5 Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Indew, i. 228; 

* Macdonell (Ved. Myth., pp. 160, 161) Oertel, JAOS. xviii. 31. See Oldenberg, 
refers the name to the scorching of the Rel. des Veda*, pp. 154 ff. ; Hillebrandt, 
earth by drought. Hillebrandt (Ved. Ved. Myth. iii. 292 ; JB. iii. 199-202. 
Myth. iii. 290) thinks the demon who * Bloomfield, JAOS. xv. 143 ff. Oldenberg, 
eclipses the sun may be meant. GN. 1893, pp. 342 ff.; Frazer, Golden 

* Hillebrandt (VOJ. xiii. 316) compares the Bough, xi. 280; Hillebrandt, Ved. 


later legend of the gazelle form of Myth. iii, 255 ff.; Weber, Rajasiya, 


Chap. 9] Indra 131 


seems, made a compact with him not to slay him by any weapon, by wet or 
dry, by day or night, and, true to this compact, when he did slay him it was 
with the foam of the sea at the twilight on the margin of the sea, and the head, 
struck off, follows him, reproaching him with treachery. The story is especially 
interesting because of its clear reference to the idea of the external soul : 
doubtless that of Namuci was deemed to be placed in the sea foam. Note- 
worthy also is Indra’s consciousness of guilt in slaying. A further curious 
tale tells how Indra as the result of over-indulgence in his favourite Soma 
became ill, and how he was cured by drinking with Namuci, or by extracting 
in some way from his body, a curious mixture of Soma and Sura. The Sautra- 
mani rite of the Brahmanas is clearly a case of a rite founded on the strange 
and unedifying myth. In the Rigveda ? Indra twists off the head of Namuci, 
which suggests the natural phenomenon of a waterspout amidst a storm. 

The Asuras also are more probably to be taken as the powers of darkness 
than as men, though individual Asuras may be quite well nothing but men : 
thus Pipru is called a Dasa, and also an Asura, and the Asura Varcin, whose 
hundred and thousand men are slain by Indra and Visnu when they over- 
throw Cambara, may fall in the same category. As we have seen, the Asuras 
appear but seldom as foes in the Rigveda ; in one hymn, however, we learn 
that Agni abandons the Asuras, and joins the gods, that Indra slays Vrtra, 
and that the wiles of the Asuras depart from them.? In the Brahmana 
literature Indra of course, like the other gods, fights against the Asuras, and 
after the usual period of defeat succeeds in defeating them in turn by the 
adoption of some ritual device or the repetition of some formula.* 

In some cases we have full evidence of historical happenings. Turvaca and 
Yadu, that is the kings of the two tribes of that time, in whose historical 
character we have no ground to doubt,® are declared to have been brought 
safely over the stream by Indra’s aid, doubtless procured by the help of the 
priest, and he is the great god who assists Sudas at the instance of Vasistha ° 
in the battle with the ten kings, and makes him overthrow his rivals, bringing 
them to death in the stream of the Parusni, and then assisting the king to 
overthrow Bheda. Similar is the statement that he aided Sucravas and slew 
60,099 of his enemies, though the number is fabulous. It is he on whom men 


p. 102, n. 4 (morning mist). See MS. Acad. xv. 44. 
iv. 3.4; 4.4; TS. i. 8.14; TB.i.7. ‘* In the Subrahmanya formula (CB. iii. 
PGi Sa ait O Rava oO EX. Ve Osi ks 3. 4. 18; JB. ii. 79; iii. 233) Indra is 
PB. xii. 6.8. invoked as ram of Medhatithi, an episode 
1 So with Vrtra, TS. ii. 5.3.63; PB. xxii. brought by some scholars into connexion 
LS eee LVasth Ss SOs Loelia oO. nl.0c : with the Ganymede legend; Weber, 
PB. xvii. 5. 1, &c. Ind. Stud. ix. 48; Oecertel, JAOS. xvi. 
2 v. 30.7, 8; vi. 20. 63 viii. 14.18; Lan- Pp. cexl’s xvii 38's) RV. vill. 2.) 40: 
man, JASB. Iviii. 28-80. Vedic Indez, ii. 178. 
%’ Magic powers are used both against (RV. ° RV. i. 174. 9. 
vii. 98.5; PB.xix.19.1)and by Indra ° RV. vii. 18 and 33. Indra appears to him 
(RV. viii. 14. 14; PB. xiii. 6. 9). -For face to face (PB. xv. 5.24; TS. iii. 5. 2), 
his wars, cf. Hopkins, T'rans. Conn. and he gains his love (PB. xii. 12. 9 f.). 


g* 


132 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


call in battle, and, little as the Vedic poetry is inspired with warlike spirit, here 
and there it is clear that the poet has caught some of the tone of war poetry. 
Doubtless part of the lavishing of wealth which is a merit of Indra’s was 
manifested in the giving of victory in the strife for cows, which, as the chief 
form of property of primitive Indian society, made up the main object to be 
won inamere foray. Indra too appears in close relations with his worshippers, 
as a friend, a brother, a father or father and mother in one. The epithet 
Kaucika denotes him as the family god of the Kucikas. He is the generous 
god par excellence, whence the title Maghavan, bountiful, is almost exclusively 
his in the Vedic ritual literature, and is his common name in post- Vedic texts. 
His bounty includes wives and also children. 

In other cases myths are attached to Indra, in which we need not seek any 
direct connexion with his nature : as a great god he can stretch out heaven and 
earth, and in particular he settles the quaking mountains, while in the later 
Vedic texts he is said to have cut off the wings of the mountains and to have 
reduced them to a stationary condition. The wings then became the thunder 
clouds. The separation of heaven and earth is sometimes attributed to his 
victory over a demon,? who held them together: the faint parallelism with 
the Hesiodic myth * is hardly worth note. If anything more than imagination 
is to be seen in the idea, it may be that the light appearing seems to separate 
the heaven and earth joined by the darkness. Probably, too, we must not see 
any reference to the myth of Vrtra is the oft repeated wonder of the poet that 
Indra places in the red or raw cow the cooked milk. The problem seems to 
have been a favourite one in India. A less satisfactory side of his character is 
revealed in his addition to the drinking of Soma: a curious, if late, hymn * 
is represented as the monologue of the drunken Indra, who sees himself able 
to do anything he likes in the intoxication produced by his deep draughts. 
His over-indulgence in the drink has been noted, and it was his desire for it 
which drove him to slay his father. He is also the hero of more than one 
amour; an old litany, the Subrahmanya, addresses him as the lover of 
Ahalya, a Brahman, calling himself Gautama, from which the Brahmanas 
derive the natural explanation that he approached Ahalya, wife of Gautama, 
under her husband’s name and form.® To Weber the episode denotes that the 
dawn of morning ascends the bright sky, but their loving commerce is broken 
by the cloud coming up, but it would be unwise to press the accuracy of such 
an explanation. It may be rather ranked with the many aetiological myths of 


? Hence in the Mahavrata armed warriors i. 99 ff.) sees init a satire, but dubiously, 
represent his power, PB. v. 5. 21. see below, Part V, Chap. 26. 

* RV. ii. 12.2; x. 44.8; iv. 54.5; MS. * Weber, SBA. 1887, p. 903. This view is 
i. 10.18; Pischel, Ved. Stud. i. 174. criticized by Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, 

SEU VeVi Oe S SUNIL Gs lea p- 166. Hopkins (JAOS. xxxvi. 264) 

* Theog. 166 ff.; Lang, Custom and Myth, compares Ahalya with the unploughed 
pp. 44 ff. For heaven and earth as land. Cf. Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 
united and severed, see Hopkins, Trans. 209, n. 4; JB. ii. 79, in JAOS. xviii. 
Conn, Acad, xv. 88, n. 1. 34 ff.; xxvi. 186. 


> RV. x. 119; Deussen (Gesch. der Phil. I. 


Chap. 9] Indra | 133 


different countries in which a family claims divine descent through the inter- 
course of a god with an ancestress, whose honour is saved by the representa- 
tion that the god approached her in the guise of her lawful spouse. A still 
more obscure story ! tells how a maiden, Apala, found Soma beside a river, and 
having pressed it dedicated it to Indra, from whom she received the fulfilment 
of certain desires. Yet more obscure if possible is the famous Vrsakapi 
hymn,’ which narrates a dispute which arose between Indra and Indrani over 
an ape, Vrsakapi, which was the dear friend of Indra, but which had aroused 
the anger of Indrani by destroying some of her property. Vrsakapi is in- 
duced, despite his caution, to be caught by Indrani and is beaten by Indra, 
and banished from the house. Indra, however, misses his companion, and in 
some way not intelligible a reconciliation is effected. It would be idle to seek 
mythological conceptions in this strange confusion of ideas, and von Bradke ® 
has ingeniously suggested that the hymn is none other than a satire on a con- 
temporary prince and his consort under the titles of the god and goddess. 
The problem is plainly insoluble. Another odd tale is that of his stealing 
Aisakrta Citibahu’s Soma in monkey form, this power of change of shape 
adhering to him in later tradition,* where he appears as a leech, parrot, or cat. 

Nothing is more interesting in Indra’s nature than the contrast between 
the strongly moral character of his rival Varuna and his own lack of moral! 
quality. He is occasionally given moral attributes, and faith in him is| 
enjoined, but the very fact that the existence of sceptics who denied his! 
divinity is recorded shows that the nature of Indra was not in all quarters 
considered to be worthy of the conception of divinity, doubtless as compared 
with the figure of Varuna. A list of his sins includes the killing of Vi¢va- 
rupa, Vrtra, the Arurmaghas, and the Yatis, and quarrelling with Brhaspati, 
to whom priestly partiality is shown.? 

The existence of Indra in the period of Indo-Iranian unity, which was 
rendered probable by the existence of a demon Indra, and of the god of victory 
Verethraghna,® who is clearly equivalent to Vrtrahan, is made practically 
certain by the discovery of the name of Indra along with those of Mitra and 
Varuna and the Nasatya among the gods of the Mitanni. While the name is of 
quite uncertain origin,’ the parallelism of the myth of the finding of the cows 
proves that part of the conception of the god is Indo-European. 


1 RV. viii. 91; von Schroeder, VOJ. xxii. ‘ JB.i.863;Oertel, JAOS. xxvi.192, 195,314. 
223-44; xxiii. 270 ff. (Apala as earth); ° AB. vii. 28 (Keith, trs., p. 314); KU. 


Frazer, Golden Bough’, xi. 192. Til Le Litto pels 

SPR Vax SCs 6 His bird form Varaghna is parallel to the 

* ZDMG. xlvi. 465. Other views in Bloom- eagle form of Indra when he brings 
field, xlviii. 541 ff.; Geldner, Ved. Stud. down the Soma; Oldenberg, Rel. des 
ii. 22 ff.; Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. Veda, p. 72. The name denotes 
278 (a constellation) ; von Schroeder, ‘ assault-repelling ’, but the idea of an 
Mysterium und Mimus im Rigveda, abstract deity (Carnoy, Iran. Myth., 
pp. 304 ff.; Tilak, Orion, pp. 170 ff. ; p. 271) is implausible, despite Moulton, 
Ludwig, Ueber d. neuesten Arb., pp. Early Zoroastrianism, p. 69. 


126 ff.; Winternitz, VOJ. xxiii. 112. 7 Bergaigne (Rel. Véd. ii. 166) suggests 


134 The Gods and Demons of the Veda (Part II 


§2. Trita Aptya 


Trita Aptya is a deity, whose importance in the Rigveda is much less great 
than the account of the feats attributed to him would at first sight seem to 
warrant. He is not the subject of any hymn, and his name is mentioned no 
more than forty times in all. His associations are predominantly with Indra, 
but also with the Maruts, Agni, and Soma. The name Aptya belongs to 
him seven times in four hymns. 

The deeds of Trita have often the closest resemblance to those of Indra, 
and still more to those of Thrita in the Avesta. Thus, exhilarated by the 
Soma, he slays Vrtra, he overthrows Vala, he destroys the three-headed 
Vicvaripa, or again he assists Indra to overthrow Arbuda, while Indra is said 
to overthrow Vicvartipa for him. He brings the Maruts on his car, and he 
sharpens Agni and makes his flames to rise. Agni also he finds. He has a 
secret and remote abode, whither the Adityas and the Dawn are besought to 
remove ill deeds and evil dreams. This home seems to be in the regions of the 
sun or the heaven. He is also a preparer of Soma, with powers of healing, and 
all wisdom centres in him. More characteristic is the legend that, being in a 
well, he prays to the gods for help: Brhaspati hears him and sets him free. 
Another version has it that, being in a pit, he prays to his father and goes forth 
claiming his father’s weapons to fight with Vicvaripa. His shadowy figure 
becomes yet more obscure in the later Samhitas ; the Yajurveda ! ascribes to 
him the giving of long life, doubtless merely because he is the presser of Soma, 
and the Atharvaveda ? knows him only as some far off deity to whom guilt or 
dreams may be banished. In the Brahmanas we come across a tale of three 
brothers, Ekata, Dvita, and Trita, the first two of whom throw Trita in a well. 
Dvita actually occurs in the Rigveda,? once with Trita and once in an Agni 
hymn apparently as identical with Agni. 

The Avestan parallel of Trita is Thrita, the third preparer of the Haoma, 
who received from Ahura 10,000 healing plants, which grew round the healing 
Haoma. Cognate with Thrita is Thraétaona, son of Athwya, who slays the 
serpent of three heads and six eyes, AZi Dahaka: in his expedition for this 
purpose he is accompanied by two brothers who seek to slay him. The 
name Trita of course is third, while Aptya seems to refer to water and to be 
equivalent to Apam Napat. 

The original nature of so obscure a god is not easy to decide. The connexion 
of Trita with Triton led Roth 4 to the view that he was a wind and water god : 
Hardy °® finds in him a moon god, for which view there is no evidence at all ; 


indh; Jacobi (KZ. xxxi. 816 ff.) * viii. 47.16; v.18. 2. 
‘manly’; Bezzenberger (BB. i. 342) ‘* ZDMG. ii. 224. The divergence of 


compares AS. ent, ‘ giant,’ OHD. en- quantity can be explained by folk 
tioc; Giintert (Welikdnig, p. 14), vidéw. etymology ; Giintert (p. 31) makes him 
rps dae Ae 2. the ‘ friendly’ third of a divine triad. 


ae Lark) a s\eXd Xe OG. iAe * Ved.-brahm. Periode, pp. 35-8. 


Chap. 9] Trita Aptya 135 


Hillebrandt ! holds that he is god of the bright sky revered in the Aptya 
family, or a deified ancestor, which is certainly inadequate as an account of his 
nature, and Pischel’s ? suggestion that he was originally a human healer, 
who was later deified, can hardly be taken seriously. Perry * is unquestionably 
right in seeing in him an older god than Indra, who seems to have largely 
usurped his position as an important deity. His connexion with the Soma, 
which is peculiarly close and which shows him as more active in the details of 
its preparation than Indra, who is rather the drinker of Soma than the pre- 
parer of the plant, suggests the conclusion, which is also made plausible by his 
name as Third, that he is a form of fire, the lightning in which the Soma 
descends to earth. This would agree with his nature as watery, Aptya, and 
does not contradict any of his known features. But it is possible to hold that 
he was really a water deity, a parallel to the Greek Triton and the German 
Mimi.® 
§3. Apam Napat 

The deity Apam Napat, ‘ child of the waters,’ is more distinguished than 
Trita Aptya by being the subject of one whole hymn in the Rigveda, where his 
name occurs some thirty times in all. He is essentially connected with the 
waters, his relation being envisaged in diverse ways: three divine females 
desire to give him food, he sucks the milk of the first mothers, but he also 
engenders the embryo within them, as a bull. On the other hand he shines 
without fuel in the waters ; clothed in the lightning he mounts upright the 
lap of the shining waters ; around him the swift golden-coloured waters go. 
He is golden in form, he comes from a golden womb. His food is ghee, he has 
in his home a cow which gives him milk. He dwells in the highest place, and 
grows in secret, and in the hymn addressed to him he is directly identified with 
the god Agni, but elsewhere, though associated with Agni, he is distinguished 
from him. In the ritual he is connected with the waters ; when the priests go 
for the waters required for the sacrifice, it is to Apath Napat that they address 
their prayer, and to him they offer butter in order to procure suitable waters ; 
offerings are likewise made to him in the case when the sacrificial victim 
perishes in water, or when the Kariristi, a rain spell, is performed. 

In the Avesta there is found a spirit Apam Napat, who lives in the depths 
of the waters, surrounded by females ; he is said to have recovered the glory 
when in the flight between Atar and the dragon it fell in the ocean VourukaSa. 
In this trait there is clearly a connexion with fire, and the igneous nature of the 
spirit is asserted by Spiegel ® and Darmesteter,’ the latter of whom considers 


1 Varuna und Mitra, p. 94. Cf. Ved. Myth. is a short form of Tritavana ‘ the thrice 
iii. 39, 343 f. strong’, Thraétaona corresponding to 

2 GGA. 1894, p. 428. Traitavana (RV. once Traitana), and 

8 JAOS. xi. 142-5. Aptya being a popular etymology for 

* Macdonell, JRAS. xxv. 419-96. Atpya. This is not plausible. 

5 


Carnoy, JAOS. xxxviii. 294ff.; Les ° Ar. Per., pp. 192, 193. 
Indo-Européens, pp. 199f. Wacker- 7 SBE. iv*. p. lxiii; cf. von Schroeder, 
nagel (GN. 1909, p.61) holds that Trita Arische Religion, ii. 490 f. 


136 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part IT 


him to be the fire-god born from the cloud in the lightning. The natural con- 
clusion is that the traditional view is correct, and the Apam Napat is the same 
god as Agni, who is conceived as the lightning in the clouds. Of the moon 
character as connected with the waters which Hillebrandt ! ascribes to this 
deity, a view accepted by Hardy,? it is difficult to see any clear trace, and of 
resemblance to the sun as suggested by Max Miiller * there is small evidence. 
Oldenberg’s * view that Agni and Apam Napat were originally distinct and 
that the identification, which he does not deny, is later, is of course possible, 
but it is not supported at all conclusively by the ritual, which naturally 
emphasizes the water side of the god, but which by no means proves that he 
was a water deity. The fact that the only hymn ® addressed to him already 
identifies the deities precludes us from certain knowledge of an earlier period 
in the history of the deity. The other deities beside Agni with whom the god 
is found mentioned, such as Ahi Budhnya and Aja Ekapad, are probably 
also akin in part to Agni, and this is clear of Savitr, with whom the god seems 
to be identified once.® 


§4. Ahi Budhnya 


Ahi Budhnya, ‘ the serpent of the deep ’, is closely associated in the few 
cases, twelve in all, in which his name is found in the Rigveda with the gods 
Aja Ekapad, Apam Napat, the ocean, and Savitr. His name never occurs 
save in the hymns to the All-gods, and there it is regularly found among the 
spirits of the atmosphere, and in the Naighantuka ’” he is definitely assigned 
to the middle or aerial region. The only definite traits ascribed to him are 
that he is born of the waters, sitting at the bottom of the streams in the 
spaces, language which the normal spirit of the Rigveda no less than the express 
assertion of Yaska § induces us to refer to the ocean of the air, and not to the 
earthly waters. His dangerous character is hinted at by the fact that he is 
implored not to give over his worshippers to evil.® 

The explanation of the nature of this spirit is by no means obvious. The 
serpent par excellence of the Vedic poets is Vrtra, who encloses the waters, but 
also is described as lying upon them, or in the depth of the waters. Agni, 
however, is also described as a raging serpent and is said to have been produced 
in the depth (budhna) of the great space. To Hardy ! the god is another form 
of the moon, to Oldenberg “ a water snake, and Macdonell ” suggests that 
he is really a form of Ahi-Vrtra regarded as divine, and not as merely an enemy 


1 Ved. Myth. i. 365 ff.; ii. 183; iii. 838. 8 Nir. x. 44. 
* Ved.-brahm. Periode, pp. 38, 39. ®* RV. vii. 34.173; v. 41. 16. 
* Chips, iv’. 410; Magoun, JAOS. xx. ii. 1° Ved.-brahm. Periode, p. 41. 
137 ff.; AJP. xxi. 274 ff. Cf. Gray, “ Rel. des Veda®, p. 70. Cf. the German 


Archiv fiir Rel. iii. 18 ff. dragons ; Helm, Altgerm. Rel. i. 206 ff. ; 
4 Rel. des Veda*, pp. 117-19. Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 340 (ein 
& RV. 11. 85: cf. x. 30./3,.4. Rest vom Quellenkult). 
6 Macdonell, Ved. Myth., p. 2 Ved. Myth., p. 73. 
7 


Vv. 4. 


Chap. 9] Ali Budhnya 137 


of Indra. More vaguely it may be thought that the god is nothing more than 
a personification of the writhing cloud, whose serpentine form is a simple 
enough conception ; the difference between this conception and that of Vrtra 
would lie in the fact that the latter conception applies to the thunder clouds 
rather than to the mere clouds of the sky. The prayer for safety from harm 
would be natural enough addressed to a deity conceived in serpent form. It is, 
however, also possible that the god is merely another form of Agni; in the 
later Vedic texts the god is connected with Agni Garhapatya,1 and with Aja 
Ekapad he receives a formal share in the offering at a Grhya ceremony, from 
which, however, it would doubtless be wrong to deduce that he was then a 
living deity. Such a deity he cannot have been for even the earliest period of 
the Rigveda, and the occasional mention of these gods even in the latest texts 
is testimony not to the life of the god but to the commanding influence of the 
Rigveda. In the post-Vedic literature the name survives as an epithet of 
Civa and the name of a Rudra. 


§5. Aja Ekapdd 


Aja Ekapad, ‘the one-footed goat’, is mentioned five times with Ahi 
Budhnya, and but once alone. The deities with whom he is mentioned are the 
ocean, the stream, the aerial space, the thundering flood, and all the gods, and 
his aerial connexion seems clear despite the preference for the celestial region 
evinced by the Naighantuka.? In the later literature he appears as making 
firm the two worlds, according to the Atharvaveda,* and as born in the east 
according to the Taittiriya Brahmana,® and in the domestic ritual he is once 
joined with Ahi Budhnya. Native tradition, but only at a very late date, 
makes him out to be a form of Agni or the sun.® 

It is difficult from these scanty facts to make anything out as to the nature 
of the god: Roth? taking Aja, not as ‘ goat’ which is its proper sense, but 
literally as ‘ driver’, saw in him the storm; Bergaigne °, rendering Aja as 
‘unborn’, thinks he is a mysterious deity of the isolated world; Hardy ® 
finds in him as usual the moon; Victor Henry 1° and Bloomfield “4 the sun, 
while Macdonell !* suggests the interesting, and, so far as the evidence allows, 
satisfactory, hypothesis that the lightning form of Agni is meant, the goat 
denoting his swift coming, and the one foot the solitary streak which smites 
the earth. This view is clearly preferable to that of Oldenberg,!* which sees 
in the figure the myth of a goat which holds apart the worlds, an idea which has 
no adequate support in the reference in the Atharvaveda. 


t VS. v. 88; AB. iii. 86 ; TB. i. 1.10.8. p. 53, n. 4, who suggests the whirlwind. 
+. PGS, ii. 15. 2. 8 Rel. Véd. iii. 23. 

cvs. 6. ° Ved.-brahm. Periode, pp. 41, 42. 

sexi. 1. 6: 10 Les Hymnes Rohita, p. 24. 

Siu, 1. 2.8. 1 SBE. xlii. 664. 

* Durga on Nir. xii. 29. 2 Ved. Myth., p. 74. 

7 


Nir., pp. 165, 166; cf. Weber, Rajasiiya, ™“ Rel. des Veda’, p. 71. 


138 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


§6. Mataricvan 


The god Matari¢van, unlike the one-footed goat and the dragon of the deep, 
is not an ancient god: his name occurs but twenty-seven times in the whole 
of the Rigveda, and of these instances twenty-one are found in the latest 
parts of the Rigveda : he occurs five times in book iii, so that he seems to have 
been a favourite of the Vicvamitra family, and once in book vi. His connexion 
with Agni is of the closest : his name is thrice applied to Agni, and it is said 
of Agni! ‘ As germ of the heaven he is named Taninapat ; when born he 
becometh Naracansa ; when in his mother he was fashioned as Mataricvan, 
he became the wind’s swift flight.” He is also identified with Brhaspati, and 
the poets who divide the one into many are said ? to call it Agni, Yama, 
Mataricvan. On the other hand Agni appears as distinct from Matari¢van : 
Agni appears to him and to Vivasvant, Matari¢van brings Agni to Bhrgu: 
he brings Agni from the sky, from afar for men, or from the gods. He is also 
said to produce him by friction and to set him up in human abodes. He 
is occasionally mentioned in connexion with Indra, and he serves as the 
messenger of Vivasvant between the heaven and the earth. In the wedding 
hymn he is asked with other deities to join the hearts of the husband and wife. 

The meaning of the word as ‘ he who grows in his mother’ is clearly 
authentic : ? the root is gu, and the formation of the word is not open to serious 
exception ; the accent, which is on the third syllable, is due to the analogy of 
such words as prataritvuan. The nature of the god can hardly be doubted in 
view of his relation to Agni: he must be the Agni who descends to earth in the 
form of lightning, and who like Agni himself grows in his mother. The only 
alternative view which has any plausibility is that of Oldenberg * who sees in 
him a Prometheus only, without any divine nature other than the bringing 
down of fire. This view is, however, open to the fatal objection that it is only 
reasonable to interpret the Prometheus legend in itself in the sense of the 
descent of fire; the god originally himself descends: it is later speculation 
which makes an independent personage the cause of his descent. 

Matari¢van, however, in the Yajurveda and in the Brahmanas is over- 
whelmingly the god of wind, not of fire, and this nature of his is already hinted 
at in the Rigveda where the epithets boundless and wandering are applied to 
him. In the view of Hillebrandt * the conception of the wind lies at the 
bottom of the nature of the Vedic god, and he points to the fact of the im- 
portant part played by the wind in the production of forest fires,* and the 
striking character of dust storms in India in support of his thesis. He suggests, 
however, that there may have been a tendency in the Rigveda to identify the 


AEG Vaalle Coed Le Contrast von Schroeder, Arische Re- 
2 RV. i. 164, 46. ligion, ii. 485, 526, 530, 567, 587. 
* Fay (KZ. xlv. 134) suggests ‘in materia For Loki, see Much, Der germ. Himmels- 
turgens’, but unconvincingly; cf. gott, p. 54. 
JAOS. xxxii. 392. ® Ved. Myth. ii. 149 ff. Cf. RV. ix. 67. 31. 


* Rel. des Veda’, p. 122; SBE. xlvi. 123. ‘* AV.xii. 1.51; Hopkins, JAOS. xx. 218. 


Chap. 91 Mataricvan 139 


wind and the fire which would account for the relation of Matari¢van to Agni. 
To this theory the main objection is simple: it ignores the essential and not 
accidental connexion of Matari¢van with Agni which is the most real part of 
his nature, and it is easy to point out that the transition from the fire god 
to a wind god is natural enough, and already hinted at in the Rigveda, where 
of Agni himself it is said that he is like the rushing wind. 

Like the serpent of the deep and the one-footed goat, Mataricvan is not 
a popular deity, and plays but little part in the cult. Matali, Indra’s charioteer 
in the post-Vedic literature, may be a faint reminiscence of his nature. 


§7. Vayu and Vata 


The real wind gods of the Rigveda are Vayu and Vata, who differ however 
quite distinctly in character and in importance. Vayu has one whole hymn ! 
addressed to him, and shares half a dozen with Indra, while Vata has only 
two short hymns in the tenth book.? The former is the more anthropomor- 
phized of the two gods ; hence he is joined with Indra, while Vata is associated 
with Parjanya, who in comparison with Indra is an elemental deity. The 
close connexion of Indra and Vayu is seen in the fact that Yaska ® gives Vayu, 
or Indra, as the second member of the triad of gods, into which the Nairuktas 
reduced the Vedic pantheon. 

Vayu is beautiful, touching the sky, thousand-eyed: he travels on his 
impetuous course in a car with 99, 100, or 1,000 steeds yoked by his will. Indra 
rides with him in his car. He is said to have been generated by the two 
worlds for wealth, and to be the son-in-law of Tvastr, but the name of his wife 
is not given. He is also said to have generated the Maruts, and is once 
accompanied by them, but he has otherwise little connexion with them. 
In the Purusasikta he is born of the giant’s breath. Like his friend Indra, he 
is fond of the Soma, which he drinks in its pure form and which he protects. 
He is entitled to the first draught of the Soma as the swiftest of the gods: 
when the gods race, the Aitareya Brahmana‘* makes him come first, then 
Indra second. Like the other gods he is asked to grant fame, children and 
riches, and to protect the weak, but these are quite secondary traits. 

Vata is merely the wind in its power, sweeping along great clouds of dust, 
shattering and thundering : his form cannot be seen by the mortal eye, though 
his roaring is heard, nor is the place of his birth known. He is the breath of the 
gods and the recipient of oblations. Stress is laid on his whiteness, and, as the 
wind heralds lightning and the appearance of the sun, Vata is said to produce 
ruddy lights and to make the dawns to shine. His roaring is often alluded to, 


1 RV. iv. 46. For the Indo-European gods Indra and Saurva; von Schroeder, 
of wind, cf. Carnoy, Les Indo-Européens, Arische Religion, i. 285. 
pp. 208 ff. 3 Nir. vii. 5. 


2 RV. x. 168 and 186. In the Avesta ‘ ii. 25. 
Vato appears only as a demon, like 


140 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


and he is credited with healing power, doubtless from the purifying effect of 
his blasts. 

In the ritual the offerings especially of animal victims are made mainly to 
Vayu: Vata has a few offerings only made to him. The latter literature adds 
nothing of importance to the characterization of either god: stress is laid 
on the power of the god, Vayu, to diminish the heat of the sun, and in the 
Taittiriya Aranyaka! 11 male and 11 female powers are given to him as 
attendants.” 

The identification of the name Vata with Wodan is open to the most grave 
objection on the score of form, nor is the parallelism in character of decisive 
importance.® 


§ 8. Parjanya 


Parjanya, like Vata, is a god whose natural character is obvious and 
undeniable. He has three hymns in the Rigveda and his name occurs some 
thirty times, but in other passages it has beyond doubt the simple sense of 
rain cloud. More often, however, the rain cloud is made into a real person, 
often in theriomorphic shape : thus he is a bull who roars and impregnates the 
plants, and his roaring waters delight the earth. But, as the waters are 
normally conceived as feminine, he becomes in other cases a barren cow, or 
even a productive cow. He is the rain giver, and is besought to bestow rain, 
but in his actions he is subject to the control of Mitra and Varuna. He also 
thunders and smites trees and evildoers in anger, and, when he quickens the 
earth with his seed, the winds blow, and the lightning flashes. He is often 
associated with Vata, as Vayu with Indra. As a rain god plants spring up 
through him, and he is also credited with the increase of cattle, of mares, and 
of women. He is even exalted as an independent monarch, the ruler of all the 
world, in whom are established the three worlds and all beings. From another 
point of view he is essentially the father, and even the divine father. # 

In one place Dyaus is stated to be his father, and in his character, especially 
in the stress laid on his paternity, and his bull shape he is like to his father. 
His wife is the earth, though once § she is called Vacé. He has a son * who may 
be Soma, for that god is called son of Parjanya,’ but the lightning may also 
be meant. He is not rarely connected with Indra, rarely with Agni, and 


please 488 ; Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, pp. 278, 

* Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 329-31. 280 ff. 

* Cf. Feist, Kultur der Indogermanen, ‘* Von Schroeder (Arische Religion, ii. 
p. 843, who accepts connexion of 602 f.) argues that Parjanya is a 
Wodan with vates and Irish faith and hypostasis of the heaven god, as Perun 
treats him as a god of spirits, in ac- among the Slavs, Perkinas among the 
cordance with his belief that the gods Lithuanians, Pehrkon among the Letts ; 
are sprung from spirits. Helm (Alt- cf. i. 417 ff. 


germ. Rel. i. 260f.) regards Wodan ° AV.x. 10. 6. 
as a wind and spirit god. Cf. von * RV. vii. 101. 1. 
Schroeder, Arische Religion, i. 127f., 7 RV. ix. 82. 8. 


SS ee 


Chap. 9] Parjanya 141 


occasionally with the Maruts. In an interesting hymn ! the frogs are spoken 
of as raising their voices when aroused by Parjanya, though it is uncertain if the 
god or the cloud is meant. 

The nature of Parjanya as the thunder cloud is preserved throughout the 
Vedic literature and is recognized in the later period, where his name is also 
applied to Indra with whom in much he is identical, though his character has 
clear similarities also to that of Dyaus. The identification of him with the 
Lithuanian god Perkinas, the Slav Perun, and the Norse Fjérgynn, which 
would make him to be in origin a god of the oak, or of the thunder which 
smites the oak, is open to the gravest difficulties of phonology,? and must be 
considered as too doubtful to be worth more than serious consideration.* No 
other attempt to explain his name is yet made plausible, though it has been 
attempted to show that he is a rain god pure and simple. 


§9. The Waters 


Four hymns of the Rigveda and many verses praise the waters as goddesses,* 
but they have little personality and the element is nearly always plainly to be 
recognized. Their anthropomorphic form is the Apsaras, who will be treated 
below. They are mothers, or young wives: they flow in channels to the sea, 
-but they are also celestial : they abide in the seat of the gods and of Mitra and 
Varuna: Varuna moves in the midst of them, looking down on the good and 
base deeds of men. In them Agni dwells and they are his mothers. They 
cleanse and purify the worshipper, even from moral sins such as lying, cursing, 
and violence.> They bestow long life and wealth and immortality. 

The waters are also associated with honey : their waves are rich in honey, 
their milk is mixed with honey, and from tasting it Indra grows strong. For 
Soma they come with ghee, milk, and honey, and Soma takes them as his 
brides. 

In the Naighantuka the waters are reckoned as terrestrial only, but in 
some of these cases at any rate it is clear that the celestial waters are meant ; 
and that like all deities the waters are thought of as having a home in the 
heaven, even when also present on earth. The connexion with honey is of 
interest : it confirms the view that the essential conception is that the waters 
in their refreshing drink are the honey as they also are the Soma: thus the 


1 RY. vii. 103. 322 ff.; Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, 

2 Kretschmer, Gesch. der griech. Sprache, p. 220; Briickner, KZ. 1. 195. 
p.81. See Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth., iii. * Grassmann and von Schroeder prefer 
331, n. 5; Macdonell, Ved. Myth., derivation from prc ,‘ fill’ ; Bloomfield 
pp. 85,177; E. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt.* (Rel. of Veda, p. 111) suggests modula- 
I. ii. p. 870; Carnoy, Les Indo-Euro- tion to suggest pari-jana, one who 
péens, pp. 164-6; von Schroeder, surrounds the folk. Perun’s name 
Arische Religion, ii. 422, n. 2, 519, n. 1, seems clearly to be from per, ‘ strike’. 
531-4, 544 ff.; O. Schrader, ERE. ii. ‘ For their Indo-European character, cf, Car- 
33; Helm, Aligerm. Rel. i. 278, n. 1. noy, Les Indo-Européens, pp. 197-201. 


Cf. Gray, Myth. of All Races, iii. 320, * RV.i. 23. 22; x. 9. 8. 


142 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


myth of the descent of Soma is no more than the tale of the descent to earth 
of the refreshing rain when the storm breaks forth. 

With the growth of the ritual the distinction is made and developed between 
the various sources of the waters ; thus standing water becomes unfit for use 
since it is Varuna’s and Varuna would seize the sacrifice ; in the Rajastya, 
the consecration of the king, seventeen different kinds of water are used to 
confer each some special power on the king at the consecration :! the horse 
sacrifice sees also a similar use of the different powers of the waters to which 
under many aspects offerings are made. The purifying and protecting power 
of the waters is seen further in the domestic ritual, in which water is placed 
near a woman in child-bed.? 

With the waters are connected not only gods like Agni, but various plants * 
and animals, of whom the most prominent are the snakes, the ants, and the 
frogs. The connexion with the water of the snakes appears to be a case of 
theriomorphism, as seen in the deity Ahi Budhnya, and in the snake form of 
Agni as well as in the case of the demon Vrtra. The ants? are evidently 
brought into connexion with water, because of their ability to find for them- 
selves water in apparently dry places as the Brahmana legends show, and the 
frogs ° are invoked to send water, because of their close connexion with the 
waters in which they move and have their being. The ritual emphasizes this 
connexion by the use of a frog in rites where cooling is needed, and several 
plants are employed in the same way. The most important of the terrestrial 
waters are the streams and these will be treated in the next chapter. Among 
the minor figures who have some connexion with water must be included the 
Gandharvas and Apsarases. 


§10. Rudra 


Still less than Visnu has Rudra the greatness which in the later literature 
attends him. He is the subject of but three hymns in the Rigveda, shares one 
with Soma, and is mentioned in all only about seventy-five times. In the 
Rigveda he has braided hair, like Pisan, beautiful lips, firm limbs ; his colour 
is brown, and he is multiform. He is essentially radiant (¢uci), bright as the 
sun or gold, resplendent, the Asura of heaven; he wears golden ornaments 
and sits on a chariot seat. The Yajurveda and the Atharvaveda have much 
_more to tell of his appearance : the latter ® calls his belly blue, his back red, his 
neck blue, and mentions his mouth and his teeth. The Yajurveda ? calls him 
copper coloured and red, and his neck is blue-black (nilagriva), though his 


1 Weber, Rajasiiya, pp. 33, 34; TS.i.8.11. ‘4 TB.i.1.3.4; TA.v.1.4; 2.9. Cf. E. H. 


1; KOS. xv. 4. 22 ff. Cf. RV. vii. 49. 2; Meyer, Gandharven-Kentauren, pp. 156f. 

ese Ui 1,218 5h Bet af beets vile 5 RV. vii. 108; MS. iii. 14. 2; cf. the 
* HGS. ii. 4. 5. modern frog worship in October, IA. 
%’ Karira, Kharjiira, Vetasa, Avaka, Man- Xxii. 293. 


dikaparni, Dirva, Darbha (TA. v.10. * AV. xv.1.7,8; xi. 2.6. 
6), &e. 7 VS. xvi. 7, 51, 2-4. 


Chap. 9] Rudra 143 


throat is white (¢itikantha) ;+ it mentions that he is clothed in a skin and 
dwells in the mountains. 

The character of Rudra in the Rigveda is distinctly formidable: he 
wields the lightning and the thunderbolt and is an archer, but his fierce 
character is not manifested as that of Indra in his onslaughts on demons, for | 
that is no part of his nature. He is as destructive as a terrible beast, the ruddy 
boar of heaven. He is unassailable, rapid, young, unaging, ruler of the world, 
and its father. From this side of his nature may be derived his aspect as 
wise, beneficent, bountiful, easily invoked and auspicious (¢iva), but the last 
epithet,” which furnishes the late Vedic name of the god, is not appropriated 
to him even in the Atharvaveda. He is also a god of healing ; he has healing 
remedies, the chief being Jalaisa,* which is explained variously as the Soma or 
as the rain, whose property as healing is recognized freely in the Rigveda. 
Nor is this element in his nature a minor one: it is given as one of his 
characteristic in a hymn, where the gods are named only by their epithets, 
and both the Rudras and the Maruts are mentioned with him in this 
connexion. 

On the other hand the majority of the passages of the hymns, which deal | 
with him, are concerned with deprecating his wrath, and praying that his | 
shaft may not fall upon his worshippers, their parents, children, men, cattle, 
or horses ; he is besought to avert his great malevolence and his bolt from his | 
worshippers, to avert from them his cow- and man-slaying weapon. He is even 
once directly called manslaying.* 

Rudra is in the Rigveda closely associated with the Maruts, whose father | 
he is and who are often spoken of as the Rudras or the Rudriyas. He bears 
also once the epithet Tryambaka, which appears to mean ‘ having three | 
sisters ’ or ‘ mothers ’; the interpretation of the reference as an allusion to the 
three divisions of the universe is possible enough, as the allusion is not made 
in an early hymn. In one passage of the Rigveda he is identified, among other 
gods, with Agni.® 

In the later Samhités and in the Brahmanas Rudra has become, like 
Visnu, and with him, one of the two great gods of the Brahmans. Some of his 
aspect as a god of healing is still remembered : the Sittras ® prescribe offerings 
to him for the sake of the cattle, and he is lord of cattle ; doubtless in part this 


LS lV. Som ose Cire iver Osa se Aroma spite BSOS. 11. iv. 810. 
(Rudra, pp. 274 ff.) insists that red * Bloomfield, AJP. xii. 425-9 (rain= 
and blue-black are connected with the mitra); Bergaigne, Rel. Véd. iii. 32 
dead and thus prove this as a primitive (= Soma). His rain is denoted by 
feature of Rudra’s character, but it is midhvans, and is referred to RY. i. 64. 6; 
clear that primarily he is merely bright 85. 5. Arbman’s (Rudra, pp. 19 f.) 
(RV. viii. 29. 5) and brown rather than objections are clearly invalid. 


red, and the epithets are best explained ‘* RV. iv. 3. 6. 

as referring to fire, Jacobi, ERE. ii. ° RV. ii. 1. 6. 

803 f. 6 AGS. iv. 8.40 ; Kaug. li. 7. Cf. PB. vii. 9. 
* Connexion with Tamil ¢givan, ‘ red-man’, 18; xxi. 14. 18; Mahadeva slays 

is neither proved nor plausible, de- cattle, PB. vi. 9. 7-9. 


144 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


attribution of cattle to his care may be due to the anxiety of their owners to 
induce him to spare them from his wrath, but the other side of his figure may 
also be a factor in producing the result. On the other hand his malevolence is 
very prominent: his wrath is continually deprecated, he is invoked not to 
assail his worshippers with celestial fire, and to make his lightning fall else- 
where. He is said in the Atharvaveda!? to attack with fever, cough, and 
poison, and that Veda? also conjures up the image of his wide-mouthed 
howling dogs, who swallow unchewed their prey. In the Catarudriya litany * 
he bears the most remarkable epithets, which designate him as the patron of 
robbers, highwaymen, cheats, swindlers, and other similar people. 

The express and complete identification of Rudra with Agni, which is 
first found only incidentally in the Rigveda, is now a received feature of his 
nature and the principle is widely extended. In the Yajurveda * the names of 
Carva and Bhava are ascribed to him, while in the Atharvaveda ® these two 
seem still to be separate gods, who, however, have destructive arrows and 
lightnings. In a later passage ® they are called his sons, as Mahadeva, and 
compared with wolves. <A late part of the Vajasaneyi Samhita ’ enumerates 
as forms of the one god Agni, Acani, Pacupati, Bhava, Carva, Mahadeva, 
Icdna, and Ugradeva with others. In the Brahmanas 8 is found a list of names 
of Agni as Rudra, Carva, Pacupati, Ugra, Acani, Bhava, and Mahan Deva, 
while Carva, Bhava, Pacupati and Rudra are said to be names of Agni.® 
Acani obviously means lightning, and is so explained by the Catapatha 
Brahmana, but according to the Kausitaki Brahmana it is equivalent to 
Indra. The Vajasaneyi Samhita 1° also gives Ambika as the sister of Rudra: 
she seems to be derived from the epithet Tryambaka : later on she appears as 
his mother ; his wife, Uma Haimavati or Parvati, appears first in the Taitti- 
riya Aranyaka ™ and the Kena Upanisad.1” 

In the Brahmanas we find the power of Rudra at its height. The gods even 
are afraid lest they be killed by the god. Under the name of Mahadeva he is 
essentially the slayer of cattle, and he is said to be prone to slay men.!* His 


1 xi, 2. 22, 26; vi. 90. 7 xxxix. 8. For the identity of Agni and 
> x. 1. 30. Cf. Wodan’s corpse-eating Rudra, cf. Hopkins, Trans. Conn. 
wolves ; Helm, Altgerm. Rel. i. 208, Acad. xv. 36 f.; JB. iii. 261. 
n. 92. SPCB. Vic Le G.yl sts bee Vigo) Meenas 
SOV SIX V1 see Sarl varie 8. 19 has Hara, Mrda, Carva, Civa, 
‘ VS. xvi. 18, 28, from ¢ardva in a legend in Bhava, Mahadeva, Ugra, Bhima, Pagu- 
JB. iii. 261. Here he appears as Akhala pati, Rudra, Cankara, and Igana. Cf. 
(cf. Civa); as Igana akhala, ii. 254 PGS. iii. 8. 6; HGS. ii. 3. 8. 6 ff. 
(Agni in PB. xxi. 2.9); cf. JUB.i.5; ° CB.i. 7.3. 8. 
Icana alone in JB. ii. 222. 10° 31.5; MS.i. 10.20; TB.1i. 6. 10. 
BAY. ti. 27. 6 3:-v. 98. 1s e051, 28 xi, 221.) Ch Weber, Ind Stud. is 78 3) ile LG 
12: Arbman, Rudra, p. 305. 


° CGS. iv. 20. 1. Arbman (Rudra, p. 29) ™ iii. 15. 
most arbitrarily asserts that these gods 7 AGS. iv. 8. 82. In PB. xiv. 9. 12 he 
were originally identical with Rudra, appears as mrgayu ; Vayu (PB. xxiii. 
worshipped outside Vedic circles. 13. 2) is overlord of forest cattle. 


Chap. 9] Rudra 145 


origin is traced in the Aitareya Brahmana,! to the evil deed of Prajapati in 
consorting with his own daughter ; the gods in their anger make up the most 
appalling of beings, who pierces the father god and thus asserts outraged 
morality. Another story in the same Brahmana? reveals him as a great 
black * being who appears on the place of sacrifice, and claims all that is over 
as his own, a claim which Nabhanedistha is told by his father must be recog- 
nized as being valid. In the ritual we find that he is marked out emphatically 
from the other gods: at the end of the sacrifice a handful of the strew is 
offered to him to propitiate him,‘ at the end of a meal any food left over is 
placed in a spot to the north for him to take ;° his abode is in the north, 
while the other gods abide in the east, the place of the rising of the sun. The 
bloody entrails of the victim are made over to his hosts, which attack men and 
beast with disease and death, in order to avert their anger ; ® the red colour of 
the god is the colour of fire and of blood. Moreover, the snakes ” are clearly 
conceived as being among his servants. When the gods reached heaven, it is 
said, Rudra was left behind.’ Still more important is the tendency seen to 
generalize the operations of Rudra: in the Catarudriya litany of the Yajurveda 
he is credited with activity in almost every aspect of nature, in the mountains, 
the woods, the paths, and the streams. So in the ritual it is prescribed that 
offerings should be made to Rudra in the most manifold places and on varied 
occasions.® In a place infested by snakes one should offer to Rudra who lives 
among the snakes, at a mound of manure to Rudra who is lord of cattle, in 
a river to Rudra who lives in the waters, at a cross way to Rudra of the roads, 
at sacred trees, at the place of sacrifice and so on.!° A versein the Yajurveda 
reveals to us Rudra as a god haunting the lonely woods; the cowherds, and the 
maidens, who are drawing water, catch a glimpse of him." He haunts the 
hills and is closely related to the trees, on which he deposits his weapons when 
he lays them aside.” It is clear that this wide extension of his power, which 
applies to the waters and to the fish in them and to the whole animal and 
vegetable kingdom, is due to a deliberate tendency to see in him a god with 
a comprehensive control over all nature. 

Another sign of the greatness of Rudra is found in the Aitareya Brahmana : 
it is prescribed that a formula must be altered from the form in which it 
occurs in the Rigveda in order to avoid the direct mention of the name of the 
god: this is clear proof of advance in the conception of him since the Rigveda. 
In another passage of the same text he is never named, but is referred to as 


1 iji, 833. 1; a later variant in JB. iii. ° If he is the akhald devatad in JUB. i. 5 


221-3; cf. CB.i. 7. 4. (Caland, Over en wit het Jaiminiya- 
2v. 14. brdhmana, p. 47, n. 69), then he is 
3 Cf. AV. ii. 27. 6 (black hair) ; xi. 2. 18. credited with repelling (from heaven) 
4 GGS. i. 8. 28. the man who does evil. 

5 ApDS. ii. 24. 23. 10 HGS. i. 16. 8 ff. ; PGS. iii. 15. 7 ff. 
* CCS. iv. 19.;8 3 ef: AB. ii, Ts 12 LOU NSE Ae Mee 

7 AGS. iv. 8.28. Cf. Arbman, Rudra, p.252. ™ TS. iv. 5.10. 4. 

OBO. 8.1. 8 iii, 84. 7. 


10 [x.0.s. 31] 


146 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


‘the god here’, and the same avoidance of direct use of the name is to be 
seen elsewhere. 

In the late Sitra literature we find ascribed to him the names of Hara, 
Mrda, Civa and Cankara;? the last three at least are evidently intended 
to be euphemistic : the great and dread god must be treated as auspicious in 
order to make him so in point of fact. The specific account of him as the lord, 
or the great god, shows a development of his character even within the period 
of the later Samhitas, for these epithets are not found in the earlier books of 
the Vajasaneyi Samhita, but only in the later portion of that text.* 

The original nature of Rudra is far from clear. The name itself is clearly 
derived from the word rud, which India tradition takes as having the normal 
meaning of cry: the suggestion of Pischel * that ruwd means to be ruddy or, 
as Grassmann suggests, to shine, must be regarded as too hypothetical to 
found any theory upon. From the etymology Weber ® derives the view that 
the deity was originally the howling of the storm, the plural therefore denoting 
the Maruts, but that the deity as known to the Yajurveda is essentially a com- 
pound of the two gods of fire and storm, both being alike in their sound. The 
view of Hillebrandt ° insists that Rudra is the deity of the hot season in India 
from the advent of summer to the autumn, and he points out that it is possible 
that this idea was associated with some constellation as in the conception 
saevus Orion. He also points out that Rudra appears in conjunction with. 
the archer Kreanu and with Tisya, who is generally regarded as a constellation, 
and that the Aitareya Brahmana ’ makes the myth of the slaying of Prajapati 
to have an astronomical signification, Prajapati in his form as a deer becoming 
the Mrga, which the commentary explains as the constellation Mrgaciras, 
Rudra the Mrgavyadha, Prajapati’s daughter in antelope form the constella- 
tion Rohini, and the arrow with which Prajapati was pierced the Isu Trikanda 
in the sky. But he recognizes that any precise identification is not to be 
obtained by the material available. L. v. Schroeder,’ on the other hand, 
insists that Rudra is nothing more than the elevation to the rank of a high 
god of the chief of the souls of the dead: it is an idea, for which almost an 
indefinite amount of evidence is forthcoming, that the souls of the dead rush 
along in the storm winds and that besides being terrible they bring with them 
blessings to cattle. Oldenberg,® while noting this as a possible source of the 
character of the god, prefers to point out the similarity of the nature of Rudra 


iii. 38. Cf. Hirzel, Der Name, pp. 15 ff. ? ili. 33. For an implausible guess at the 


2 AGS. iv. 8. 19. sense, cf. Arbman, Rudra, pp. 30 ff. 
SPXXXIX. 9. § VOJ. ix. 233-52 ; Mysterium und Mimus, 
* ZDMG. xl. 120. Other suggestions make pp. 19, 21 ff. ; Charpentier, VOJ. xxiii. 
Rudra or Civa, or both, Dravidian 151 ff.; Johansson, Ueber die altind. 
words. Cf. Segerstedt, RHR. lvii. 298, Géttin Dhisand, pp. 88,92. The views of 
who emphasizes his connexion with the Tilak in his Orion are unacceptable ; 
un-Aryan Nisadas. see Whitney, JAOS. xvi. pp. bxxxii ff. 
® Ind, Stud. ii. 19-22. ® Rel. des Veda*, pp. 215-24; Winternitz, 
° Ved. Myth. ii. 179-208; (KI. Ausg.), pp. IF. Anz. viii. 88; Pischel, GGA. 1895. 


164-5. pp. 150 f. 


Chap. 9] Rudra 147 


in its essence to such figures as the mountain and wood gods or demons, like 
Mars Silvanus, the Fauni,! and so on, and he also points out that it is a common 
idea that disease comes from the mountains. Moreover, this view suits the 
connexion of Rudra with the north, since in India the mountains of importance 
to the Vedic Indians were in the north.2, Uma, who is given in late texts to 
Rudra as wife, is styled Haimavati, from the Himavant. 

The chief defect of these views is that they are based too exclusively upon 
the later accounts of the nature of the god, which really represent a time when 
he is ceasing to be connected with the original natural basis, on which the 
conception rests. There is nothing in the conception of the god as he is found 
in the Rigveda, which cannot be explained by the idea of a storm god con- 
sidered mainly in the form of lightning, the tempest being viewed on its 
destructive rather than its healing aspect. From this could be derived easily 
the god’s character as father of the Maruts, while from the beneficent rains 
loosened by the storm comes the aspect of him as a healing god, which is an 
essential feature of his character in the Rigveda and without which indeed he 
could hardly have been accepted as a god by the religion of the Rigveda. 
This theory explains in a satisfactory manner his connexion with Agni, which 
is close and obvious. Moreover, the theory of the original relation of Rudra 
with the dead is contradicted by the fact that he never appears in any close 
connexion with the dead: he is not their king, nor does he lead them to, or 
receive them in, his realm ; his is the Svaha not Svadha call in the offering ; 
his place is the north, not the south, which is essentially that of the dead, and, 
though in certain aspects the ritual of the dead has analogies with that for 
Rudra, that point is adequately and naturally explained by the fact that both 
the dead and Rudra have terrible characteristics. The clear connexion of 
Rudra with the sky is fatal to Oldenberg’s theory, for the period of the 
Rigveda at any rate. 

The Catapatha Brahmana ‘ tells us that Carva was a name of Agni among 
the eastern people and that Bhava was used among the Bahikas, which 
suggests that in Rudra there have combined the forms of different but 
kindred gods. A reference to the cult of Rudra by the Vratyas has been seen 
as the explanation of the curious Vratya hymn of the Atharvaveda ° and of the 
ceremonies which are used for the introduction into the Vedic religious life of 
the non-Brahmanical Aryans. The evidence for this view, however, must be 


1 Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals, pp. 258 ff. ; Periode, p. 83. Ludwig (Jtigveda, iii, 
Roman Ideas of Deity, pp. 93, 94. 820 ff.) holds that Dyaus develops on 

* Hillebrandt (Ved. Myth. ii. 207) finds the the moral side into Varuna and on the 
connexion with the north in the fact physical to Rudra. Bergaigne (Rel. 
that the sun is to the north during the Véd. iii. 31 ff.) treats him as ‘le pére 
period of the most dangerous season of céleste’; Siecke (Archiv fiir Rel. i. 
the year. 113 ff., 209 ff.) as the moon. 


5’ Hopkins, JAOS. xvi. pp. cl. ff.; Bloom- ‘ i. 7. 3. 8. 
field, AJP. xii. 429; Macdonell, Ved. ° xv. 1; Charpentier, VOJ. xxiii. 151 ff. ; 
Myth., pp. 76 ff. ; JRAS. 1895, p. 956 ; xxv. 355 ff. 
1900, pp. 383 ff.; Hardy, Ved.-brahm. 


10* 


148 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


regarded as quite insufficient to make it even plausible.1_ The question, how- 
ever, does arise whether in the late Rudra we have not the syncretism of more 
than one deity, and possibly the influence of the aboriginal worship on the 
Aryan. It is certainly possible that a forest and mountain deity or some 
kindred god, such as a vegetation spirit, and even a god of the dead may be 
united with the Vedic lightning god to form the composite figure of the 
Yajurveda: the view preferred by Oldenberg, that the god is really the same 
throughout the whole period, and that it is the nature of the tradition which 
obscures the fact, cannot be accepted in face of the obvious probability of 
development of religion, and the admitted ease with which deities absorb 
foreign elements into their character. In the later Civa there are many 
traces of conceptions commonly associated with vegetation spirits, and his 
phallic cult is one which is condemned by the Rigveda, but which doubtless 
remained as popular among the aborigines as it now is among Civa worshippers 
throughout India. 

A very elaborate effort to show that the Rigveda presents a later and 
priestly conception of Rudra as a celestial deity, a priestly refinement from 
an ancient cannibalistic death demon, is made by Arbman.? He contends that 
the nature of the post-Vedic Rudra is already indicated very clearly in the 
later Vedic texts, suggesting that the popular god of the Rigvedic period was 
very much the same as the post-Vedic deity, and that it is more probable 
that the priests of the Rigveda transmuted a popular god than that a god such 
as that of the Rigveda developed by any means into the later Rudra-Civa. It 
appears unnatural and unreasonable to accept this suggestion, as opposed to 
the simple and plausible hypothesis that the later Civa represents the fusion 
of more than one deity. We have for such fusion the increasing number of 
distinct names, which are allotted by the texts to Civa, as seen both in the 
Catapatha Brahmana and the Kausitaki Brahmana, and syncretism of deities 
is so common and notorious that it seems strange to find so much reluctance 
to accept what is notoriously a trait of the post-Vedic Civa, whose cosmo- 
politan character enables him to absorb local god after god. Moreover, in order 
to bolster up the view of the primitive chthonic character of Rudra, it is 
necessary to make the Maruts chthonic also, which is a decidedly implausible 
view. Further, it is difficult not to recognize the strong differences between 
Yama, a real death god, and Rudra, which indicate an original difference of 
origin; they belong to different regions, Yama to the south, Rudra to the 
north. Everything in the ritual goes to support the view of Rudra as a com- 
plex figure at the time when it was recorded ; he combines clear traits of 


1 Keith, JRAS. 1918, pp. 155-60. <A vagaries (Hopkins, Epic Myth., p. 231, 
different but implausible view of the n. 2), nor need we see in them Indo- 
Vratyas as Ksatriya Yogins is de- Europeans of uncertain connexion. 
veloped by Hauer, Die Anfdnge der * Rudra. Untersuchungen zum altindischen 
Yogapraxis im alten Indien, pp. 172 ff. Glauben und Kultus (1922). 


The epic does not encourage these 


Chap. 9] Rudra 149 
divine and chthonic character, as is natural in a god formed by the syncretism 
of different beliefs. 

Stress is laid by Arbman on the term Tryambaka which is accorded to 
Rudra in the Rigveda, and which he interprets as referring to the god as having 
three mothers, a fact which connects him in Arbman’s view with the cult of 
mothers, i.e. demonesses as patron goddesses in medieval and modern India.! 
If the connexion were real, we might then see in the Rudra of the Rigveda a 
figure already complicated by contamination with an aboriginal deity, for 
there is little evidence or probability of mother worship as Aryan or Indo- 
European,’ and every sign that it was dear to the Dravidian or other aboriginal 
population. But the suggested interpretation is wholly dubious ; we do not 
hear later of Civa as having three mothers, though Skanda has seven, and our 
only early tradition asserts that Ambika is the sister of Rudra, not his wife, and 
that she is the autumn.? It is, therefore, much more probable that the 
epithet refers to the god either as connected with three seasons, or as connected 
with the three worlds, heaven, air, and earth, as is the case with the Maruts 
and is natural in a god of igneous connexions. It is admitted that with Agni 
Rudra is most intimately connected, and of Agni nothing is more assured than 
his triple nature. Nor is it possible to find any support for the view of Tryam- 
baka suggested by Arbman in the Traiyambaka offering of the Crauta ritual,* 
in which nothing whatever appears to explain the name in this sense, apart 
altogether from the fact that we have no evidence whatever that the rite in 
question was known to the Rigveda, and later rites frequently stand in no 
vital connexion with the original nature of the deities to whom they are 
addressed or who are invoked in them.° 

Arbman’s theory leads to a curious and unnatural result in the case of the 
intimate connexion with Agni which the texts admittedly reveal, and which 
is shown by the interchange of Rudra’s names with Agni. The obvious 
explanation afforded by the Rigveda is that Rudra is in a sense fire, for he is 
a lightning god; to Arbman it is necessary to hold that Rudra’s dangerous 
nature was expressed in the minds of his votaries by the term fire, a conception 
bizarre and implausible. Moreover we have on every hand evidence of the 


syncretism of gods in Rudra ; Arbman seems to feel doubt over his desperate 

1 Arbman, Rudra, pp. 296f.; Hopkins, stri-ambakd. Hillebrandt (Ved. Myth. 
Epic Myth., p. 226; Monier Williams, ii. 188, n. 2) suggests that tri is equal 
Brahmanism and Hindiism, pp. 222 ff. to sivs. star. 

* In Germanic mythology they seem to be ‘4 Rudra, pp. 48 ff. 
Celtic borrowings, and Celtic deities are ° The suspension on trees of the offerings 


rather European than Indo-European ; 
cf. Helm, Aligerm. Rel. i. 391 ff. (guar- 
dian deities of the family, later of 
places) ; Carnoy, Les Indo-Européens, 
p- 68. Triads are, of course, ethnic, thus 
denoting completeness; Hopkins, 
Origin of Religion, pp. 291 ff. 


* TB. i. 6. 10. CB. ii. 6. 2.9 explains as 


at the Tryambaka offering and the 
Baudhyavihara (below, Chap. 20, § 5) 
suggests a vegetation or tree ritual, but 
by no means necessarily. It may be 
merely a natural mode of offering to 
the god whose lightning strikes the 
tree, or to a spirit of the air (Helm, 
op. cit. i. 245). 


150 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


suggestion that in the Catarudriya the term Rudra means ‘ the demon ’, and 
not Rudra at all, and gives it up for Rudra Vastospati. What is obvious is that 
the great god absorbs, as other great gods have done, a mass of Sondergotter, 
though in the Catarudriya form we have priestly ingenuity extending and 
amplifying Sondergétter in the best manner of the Roman Indigitamenta. It 
is probably to syncretism again that we owe the connexion of Rudra + with 
thieves, robbers, and highwaymen, whose patron he seems to have been, and 
from whom, therefore, he is expected to protect his votaries, and we need not 
press the suggestion that he was regarded himself as tricky,” or connect this 
aspect with the uncertain character of the lightning. Nor in the Vedic texts 
does he ever become a snake god ;_ his connexion with snakes is only incipient,* 
and it becomes much more marked in the epic, showing us clearly the process 
of identification in its advance. On the other hand, it is probable that some 
of his characteristics in the later Vedic period come from a god of death ; this 
may primarily be due to identification with Carva and Bhava, and it is sug- 
gested in his connexion with birds of evil omen * and howling dogs,* for such 
birds and dogs are closely connected with Yama as a god of the dead. 

Nor is any useful light shed on Rudra’s nature by the endeavour to deduce 
from the account of the mad Muni in the Rigveda ® the picture of Rudra as the 
god of an orgiastic cult, whose epithet of vywptakeca, ‘ with disordered hair ’, 
in the Yajurveda ’ hints at his exploits as a lord of the orgiastic dance. The 
fact is that the Rigveda tells us merely that the Muni drinks poison from a cup 
with Rudra, and the rest of the hypothesis is as baseless as the suggestion that 
the cup was really a skull. The orgiastic traits of Civa in the later mythology 
are doubtless due to the amalgamation with Rudra of a vegetation deity, an 
Indian Dionysos. 


§1l. The Maruts or Rudras 


The Maruts share in the greatness of Indra, and, therefore, they have a 
prominent place in the Rigveda, thirty three-hymns being exclusively theirs, 
while they share seven with Indra, and one each with Piisan and Agni. They 
are essentially a troupe, thrice seven ® or thrice sixty ® in number, the children 


1 Cf. Durga’s later patronage of Thugs ‘ Cf. AV. xi.2.2,11; iv. 28.4; TA.iv.28. 


(Garbe, Beitrdge zur ind. Kulturge- Cf. the euphemistic Civa as name of 
schichte, pp. 185 ff.), Hermes, patron of the jackal, the omen of death ; HGS.i. 
thieves, and Lavernain Rome (Roscher, 16.19. 
Lew. I. ii. 2872 ; II. i. 1917). 5 AV. xi. 2.30; cf._VS. xvi. 28. 
* Dhirta is an epithet in MS.i. 8.5; KS, ° x. 136; Arbman, Rudra, pp. 297 ff. Cf. 
vi. 7; ApS. vi. 11. 3; HS. iii. 18, below, Chap. 22, § 9. 
but more usually of Skanda, AV. 7 TS. iv. 5.5. That the Cila was a Vedic 
Par. xx ; BG. Par. iv. 2. weapon of Rudra is certainly not 
° Cf. AGS. iv. 8. 22 ff. The Anukramani proved by AV. vi. 90; Kaug. xxxi. 7 
treatment of AV. iii. 26, 27; vi. 56. 2, (Arbman, p. 113, n.). 


3; xii. 1. 46 as connected with Rudra * RV.i. 133. 6. 
(cf. Vait. xxix. 10) is very lateevidence. ° RV. viii. 96. 8. 


Chap. 9] . The Maruts or Rudras 151 


of Rudra, whence they are called Rudras or Rudriyas: their mother is Preni, 
or a cow, and they come with cows with distended udders: the cows can 
scarcely be anything other than the swollen rain clouds. Agni is also said to 
have produced them, and they are born of the laughter of the lightning. Vayu 
also is said to have produced them from the womb of heaven, and they are also 
sons of heaven, they have the ocean for their mother or are self-born. They 
are brothers of equal age, of equal birth, of one mind and one abode. They 
have as their bride the goddess Rodasi, and are connected with the goddesses 
Indrani and Sarasvati. 

The home of the Maruts is in the three heavens or in the three worlds. 
Their brightness is one of their leading features: hence they are directly 
called fires. They are also intimately connected with the lightning, which 
serves as their spears. On their feet they wear anklets, golden ornaments on 
their breasts, golden helmets on their heads, they carry the lightning in their 
hands, and spears on their shoulders. They have also axes of gold, while 
from Rudra they borrow the bow and arrow, and once even from Indra the 
thunderbolt. They ride in golden cars drawn by tawny steeds, which are 
often described as spotted, and called prsatis. But they are also said to 
have yoked the winds as steeds to the poles of their cars. 

The Maruts are great, young, unageing, terrible like wild beasts, but play- 
ful like children or calves: they are lions or iron-tusked boars or black swans. 
The noise of their onset is the roaring of the wind or thunder: they rend the 
mountains, crush the forests, and whirl up the dust with their steeds, which 
are the winds. They bring rain with them in their train: a river, the Marud- 
vrdha, bears trace of their power, but the rain they send is as usual sometimes 
called honey or milk or ghee. The rain which they send comes with the 
thunder and the lightning. Though they avert heat, nevertheless they are 
also said to bring the light, to dispel the darkness, and like many other gods 
they hold apart the two worlds. They sing a song, or blow a pipe, and their 
singing strengthens Indra for the slaying of Vrtra. Sometimes they appear 
as drinkers of Soma, and even as pious sacrificers, since they are singers. 

The main deed of the Maruts is the rendering of aid to Indra in the slaying 
of Vrtra, though they are mentioned also as aiding Indra’s predecessor, Trita, 
in this feat. Occasionally in place of aiding Indra only, the overthrow of 
Vrtra and the winning of the cows are attributed to them. They are styled 
sometimes sons or brothers of Indra.1 But two or three times they appear 
as having left him at the critical moment, and Indra seems to have sought in 
revenge to slay them, and to have been appeased with difficulty by Agastya,? 
in connexion with a sacrifice which that seer was anxious to offer to them. 


1 In the Brahmanas as rain-gods they rank, * RV. i. 165, 170; Pischel, Ved. Stud. i. 


on the analogy of agriculturists, as the 59; Hertel, VOJ. xviii. 153;  v. 
common folk of the gods (e.g. PB. Schroeder, Mysterium und Mimus, pp. 
mvili, Y. 145) xis. 114.613) xxi, 14. 8); 91 ff.; Oldenberg, Rgveda-Noten, i. 


whom Indra, as a sovereign, shame- 170; Keith, Sanskrit Drama, pp. 15, 
lessly plunders (PB. xxi. 1. 1 ff.). 19f. 


152 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


Their connexion with Rudra is also distinctly marked in the deprecation of 
their wrath, which is several times expressed, and their cow- and man-slaying 
bolt is referred to, as is that of Rudra.! They are said to send evil and to have 
the wrath of the serpent. From Rudra again comes the fact that they are 
entreated to bear from the Sindhu, the seas, the mountains, the Asikni, 
healing remedies, and by rain they are said to bestow medicine, which is no 
doubt rain like the Jalasa of Rudra. From the waters comes no doubt their 
purifying power. 

In the ritual they differ from Vayu in their relation to the Soma sacrifice, 
as they have a place at the midday and the evening pressings, while the 
morning pressing alone is the place for Vayu, and they play a considerable 
part in the four-month offerings. It has been sought to show that their cult 
is specially connected with the Vi¢vamitra family and is not a subject of 
much interest to the Bharadvajas and other priestly families, the Vasisthas 
for instance being mainly concerned with the relations of Indra and Vayu; 
but this theory is not supported by the references in the various books which 
seem to show throughout a recognition of Indra’s relations to the Maruts.? 

For the nature of the Maruts two explanations alone are really plausible : 
the most natural 3 is that they are the deities of the winds in their aspect as 
bearing the storm clouds: the mere winds are inadequate to explain the 
constant association of the gods with fire and lightning. The native tradition 
is that they are the winds,* and the word in post-Vedic literature simply 
means wind. The name itself throws no light on the conception, as, though 
the root may be set down as mar, it is wholly doubtful what that root is 
to mean: with the normal view of the nature of the gods, it is taken either as 
to shine or as to crush, according as it is believed to denote the Maruts as 
radiant gods, or as the winds which crush the woods. The alternative view is 
sometimes based on the etymology of mar as to die,®> and the Maruts are 
claimed as the spirits of the dead, conceived as storming along in the winds, 
and then merely as the winds. The view has the support of Kuhn, Benfey,® 
K. H. Meyer,’ v. Schroeder,*® and Hillebrandt,°* but the last alone has made any 
serious attempt to prove his thesis. He calls attention to the fact that the 
Maruts are sometimes treated in a manner analogous to Rudra or the Manes. 
Thus, after an offering to Indra on one occasion, a quite separate offering is 
made to them,!? and the reason alleged is that they are not eaters of the obla- 
tion as gods proper are ;™ they also receive an offering of an embryo, which is 


2 RV. vii. 56.9, 173 57.4; i.171.13 172. * Indog. Myth. i. 218. 


2; 64. 8, 9. 8 VOJ. ix. 248, 249. 

2 Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 825, 326. * Ved. Myth. iii. 317; (KI. Ausg.), pp. 

3 Macdonell, Ved. Myth., p. 81. 102 ff.; Arbman, Rudra, pp. 309 ff. 

4 Yaska, Nir. xi. 13. 40° PGS. ii. 15. 

5 Leumann (Buddha und Mahavira, p.11) ™ (B.iv.5.2.16,17. The face, according to 
gives mds-mrt, man-slayer, by dissimi- Hillebrandt, is to be averted at an 
lation maort, Latin mavort, mart. offering given in KCS. xviii. 4. 23 ff., 


®° On RV. i. 6. 4. but see Oldenberg, GN. 1915, p. 388, 


Chap. 9] The Maruts or Rudras 153 


normally not fit for sacrifice, they appear as destroying offspring, as seeking 
to injure the sacrifice,” as barring men from advancing through their realm of 
the air. Moreover, they are often regarded as like birds, and birds are often 
the souls of the dead.* Hillebrandt lays no stress on the etymology of the 
word, and even seems to think that the derivation may be from the Dravidian 
word marutta, a medicine man,* but, in view of the late date at which the 
Dravidian word is known, this is quite an impossible and unscientific sugges- 
tion. But the main ground of this thesis cannot obviously be taken seriously. 
The connexion with Rudra explains the special treatment of the Maruts at 
certain sacrifices, while, for the most part, as connected with Indra, they have 
an honourable share in offerings. The connexion with birds is most natural 
of the winds, and needs no reference to the souls of the dead, and often they 
have connexion with the Adityas.® 

Arbman,’ developing and improving upon a suggestion of Hillebrandt’s § 
regarding the double sense of the Maruts as the storm winds and also the 
hosts of Rudra, representing various aspects of his nature, holds that in the 
Rigveda the Maruts are the Rudras, while after that the Rudras become a 
host of demons, quite different from the Maruts, late Vedic times forgetting 
the connexion of Rudras and Maruts. This is no doubt an exaggerated view. 
The process is not one of sudden or vehement change; the extension of Rudra’s 
nature carries with it the development of the character of his troupes; the 
Rudras are wider in character than the Maruts per se would have been. But 
it is a complete error to treat the Rudras as demons, because they are destruc- 
tive and sometimes act in an evil way as demons might do ; ® equally on this 
theory most Vedic gods might be made out to be demons. The contention 
that the Rudras are demons, because Rudra is lord of beings, Bhiitapati,!° is 
wholly untenable; Bhiita does not, as suggested, in the Vedic literature, 
until possibly a very late period, bear the sense ‘demons ’, but it denotes 
‘ beings ’ pure and simple. 


n.8. No Svaha call at the offering, CB. jyotis, Citrajyotis, Satyajyotis, Jyotis- 
IVs Oe 2.175 mant, &c., VS. xxvii. 80; (B. ix. 3.1. 

ETB 1. 02 25 ae 26; as rays and months, PB. xiv. 12.9. 

STB. i Bee ae 7 Rudra, pp. 18, n. 1, 162 ff. 

SABI 10.2 3.15, vied, 0. 4. & Ved. Myth. iii. 301. 

« BDS. ii. 14.10. Arbman (op. cit., p. 309) ° TS. vii. 1.5.4; MS.i. 8. 4 (Asurasin CB. 
actually denies that gods have bird li, 4. 8. 2 ff.). In ‘TS: vic 1.1.13 TAs v. 
forms, forgetting the sungod as a bird, 8. 4 ff. the Rudras are clearly not 
Indra’s bird form, &c. demons. 

5 ZOMG. xxiii. 518. 10 AV. xi. 2.13 cf. AB. iii. 83; see Chap. 

¢ RV. x. 77.8; i. 106. 2; TS. ii. 3.1.5; 12, $53; 21,§2. 


TA. v. 4. 8; their names are Cukra- 


CHAPTER 10 
THE GREAT GODS—TERRESTRIAL 


§1. Agni 

Agent is clearly in the eyes of the priest only second to Indra in importance: 
in the Rigveda he has some 200 hymns for himself alone.t_ From Indra, how- 
ever, he is essentially distinguished by his nature ; he is intimately connected 
with the element of which he is the deity, and his nature is therefore far less 
anthropomorphic ; moreover, what there is of human in him is derived, not 
from the conception of the warrior god, but from that of the ideal priest: if 
both gods are expected to send fortune and happiness to their votaries, 
Indra gives rather victory in battle and power, Agni the prosperity and happi- 
ness of the home. Moreover, while Agni is assimilated in much to Indra and 
as usual is accorded several of his feats and his powers, Indra remains compara- 
tively unaffected by the qualities of Agni. Indra also is not, like Agni, the 
messenger between gods and men, an office, which, if it makes Agni in some 
ways a god of the closest intimacy with the life of men, still does tend to 
reduce his status, and renders him in some sense inferior to the other gods. 
‘Nor is Soma the normal drink of Agni: he is indeed a Soma-drinker, but only 
in a minimal degree for a great god, and often because of his connexion with 
Indra. 

The appearance of Agni is clearly merely a description of the fire, and in 
one passage he is truly called headless and footless: elsewhere he is called 
butter-faced, butter-backed, butter-haired, flame-haired or tawny-haired. He 
has three or seven tongues, which receive in the later literature names of 
their own ; his steeds are similarly given seven tongues. He has butter for his 
eye, four or a thousand eyes, and a thousand horns. He is also an archer. He 
is likened to, or identified with, a bull or horse or bird, an eagle or Hansa : 
even once he is called a raging serpent. Again he ? is a hatchet or a car. 

His food is ghee, but he also devours the woods, and eats thrice a day. Or 
he is the mouth by which the gods eat the sacrifice. He is invoked to come 
to sit on the strew to receive the offerings for himself, or the gods. 

Agni’s brightness is often mentioned ; he is like the sun, dispels darkness, 
and bears the epithet ‘ waking at dawn’. But, when he drives through the 
forest, shaving the earth like a barber a beard, his path is black. His flames 
roar terribly, and his light reaches the sky. But he has also a car drawn by 
two or more horses, with which he brings the gods to receive the offerings of 
men. 


* For Indo-European fire gods, see von Schroeder, Arische Religion, i. 466 ff. 
Sere Veto Goel. 


Chap. 10] Agni 155 


Agni’s mythic parents are Dyaus and Prthivi, or Tvastr and the Waters. | 
But he is also produced by the gods whose father, however, he is; he is brought 
into existence by Indra or Indra and Visnu, or by the Dawn, and is the son of | 
Ida, the personification of the sacrificial food. All these accounts are open to 
obvious explanations and are of no consequence. More important is the 
birth from the two fire sticks, the upper being deemed the male, the lower the 
female, and in mythical form being described as Puriravas and Urvaci, 
from that famous pair of lovers. They are also called two mothers, and many 
plays on the curious infant and his mothers occur.! As friction is engendered 
by the action of the hands in turning the one stick in the other, he is credited 
with ten mothers, the ten fingers. As force is needed for his production, Agni 
is the son of strength. He is born ever new and is called the youngest, but still 
is old as being born for ever. Here and there occurs, in the Brahmana litera- 
ture, the idea that the fire at the end of a year is outworn, but the idea that the 
fire is at the beginning of each year to be formally renewed in a special rite 
is not to be recognized. For the sacrifices such as the Agnistoma, the four- 
monthly rites, and the animal offering, the fire is solemnly produced anew by 
friction, but there is no evidence that the winter solstice was felt to be a time 
when the fire as such was in need of any special renewal. If such an idea 
existed,” it has not left any clear trace in Vedic ritual. 

As Agni springs from the wood, it is regularly stated that he dwells in 
plants. On earth too he has a place in the navel (ndbhi) of the earth, a 
reference doubtless to the hole in the high place of offering in which the fire is 
deposited: hence Agni is the navel of immortality. . 

Agni is also born from the waters : he is the embryo of the waters, kindled 
in the waters, a bull who has waxed great in the waters, and he descends from 
the clouds. In these cases it is probable that the waters of the clouds are 
meant: in this aspect he is Apaith Napat, who has become practically a 
separate deity. On the other hand, there is a widely prevalent view that the 
waters are terrestrial : several late hymns of the Rigveda tell of the flight of 
Agni because of unwillingness to perform the sacrifice, and his being found 
among the waters and the plants, and this legend is a common-place of the 
Brahmana period. In the Atharvaveda the Agni in the waters is clearly dis- 
tinguished from the lightning, and is made terrestrial. The Rigveda itself 
recognizes the existence of Agni in the streams. In the ritual there are many 
traces of the same view of Agni as in waters other than those of the clouds. 


+ The long period of gestation (RV. v. 2) is Religion, ii. 596 f.). 
probably an allusion tothe longlatency 7? Hillebrandt, Ved. Myjih. ii. 77 ff. Cf. his 


of fire in the wood, ere evoked by fric- 
tion. The old mode of lighting the 
fire was preserved in the rite of re- 
kindling on March 1 the fire of Vesta 
in Rome and in the occasional use of 
this method in kindling the * need fire’ 
in Germany (von Schroeder, Arische 


theory of Dawn as the Goddess of a 
New Year (above, Part II, Chap. 8, § 7). 
Cf. von Schroeder (Arische Religion, 
ii. 485), who regards Agni as reborn 
at the opening of spring, comparing the 
return of Apollo in spring (p. 523). 


156 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


At the dedication of tanks of water and similar rites, offerings are made to 
| Agni in the waters ;! the Brahman student, when he performs the bath 
'marking the end of his period of pupilship, takes water from a vessel, 
_ appropriating to himself the bright form of Agni and repelling the other forms 

of Agni, which have entered into the water.2, The waters used at the royal 
consecration are regarded as being full of Agni. In the ceremony of the 
piling of the fire altar, when it is desired to diminish the heat of Agni, cooling 
plants and a frog are placed on the altar, and Agni is asked to enter the waters 
of which he is the gall. It is clear, therefore, that the view that Agni is con- 
nected with the waters of the earth is an old one, but it must be noted that at 
no period is his connexion with the waters of the air forgotten: we find it 
expressly asserted in a Siittra > text which shows that it was perfectly well 
understood. It is impossible, therefore, to accept the view of Oldenberg that 
the connexion of Agni in the terrestrial waters is the normal one, as opposed to 
the Agni of the aerial waters: both conceptions are clearly found equally 
authenticated. The explanation of the belief in the presence of Agni in 
the terrestrial waters may be a transfer from the belief in his presence in the 
aerial waters, but it can also be accounted for in other ways. Thus the 
phenomenon of the lightning coming down to and entering the waters may 
well have played a more important part than the more elaborate idea, clearly 
valid for the Brahmana period, which sees in the plants the closest connexion 
with the waters, and which pictures a cycle from the water to the plants, from 
the plants to the flame, from the flame to the smoke, from the smoke to the 
cloud, and thence to the water again. 

In the third place Agni has a birth in the heaven ; he is born there and was 
brought down by Matarigvan, who is doubtless his lightning form. The 
Aitareya Brahmana ® calls him at once heavenly and in the waters. Agni, 
however, is often as the god contrasted with the lightning. Agni as heavenly 
is the sun, born in the morning. The Aitareya’ says that on setting the sun 
enters into Agni, and in the Rigveda ® Agni unites himself with the rays of the 
sun. But this side of the nature of Agni is little referred to : the sun was too 
great and prominent a deity to be treated merely as a form of Agni. 

The three births of Agni are constantly referred to: he is made threefold, 
has three heads, tongues, stations. The order of his abodes is variously stated, 
as heaven, earth, the waters; or earth, heaven, the waters; or sky, air, and 
earth. Hence we must doubtless trace the view of the Nairuktas preserved for 
us by Yaska,® which makes the whole Vedic pantheon reducible to the three 
gods, Agni, Indra or Vayu, and Sirya. The second member of the triad must 
be taken to have replaced the lightning, which would be more easy, since the 
lightning has no mythic name to give it substance, and, therefore, the god 


tT CGSiv. 2. pe SVikertie ae 

* PGS. ib, 6.10. 7 viii. 28. 

3 AB. viii. 6. BOW Stal we Vllsoaks 
‘ TS. iv. 6.1.2; VS. xvii. 6. SO Nirexiiey 19; 

5 


ApS. v. 16. 4. 


Chap. 10] Agni 157 


of the middle space is better represented by a deity of more concrete nature. 
On the other hand, it would be an error to underestimate the importance of 
lightning in Vedic mythology, on the ground that it is too transient in 
character to serve as the basis of mythology.! 

Still more important is the fact that the three forms of Agni explain the 
practice that in the ritual Agni is worshipped on three altars, the Garhapatya, 
the Ahavaniya, and the Daksina,? which are kept quite distinct from the 
ordinary household fire. The alternative view that these fires are to be 
regarded as the source of the myth of the three forms of Agni can hardly be 
taken seriously. More plausible is connexion with fire as the sun, as domestic, 
and as driving away evil spirits, as von Schroeder suggests. 

Though the birth of Agni is most often triple, yet in many passages he is 
given but two births, the one on earth, the other in the sky, or, less often, the 
one in heaven and the other in the waters. The idea is already found in the 
Rigveda that Agni descends into the waters, and that from the plants he 
arises again, and, from the distinction of the aspects of fire, we arrive at the 
frequent Vedic idea that the god is to sacrifice to himself, or bring himself to 
the sacrifice, or descend with the gods to the sacrifice. Moreover, by another 
view Agni is kindled not only by men or earth, but by the gods in heaven : 4 
this doubtless points at once to the necessity of some kindler for the Agni of 
the heaven as for him of earth, and to the tendency to see in the gods the pre- 
cise analogues of pious sacrificers among men. But from yet another point of 
view Agni is manifold, since there are many fires on earth: the unity of the 
conception, however, as in the case of Dawn triumphs: the other fires are 
likened to the branches of the tree, Agni. This manifold nature of his origin 
is sometimes developed in detail, as when he is said to be born from the 
heavens, the waters, stones, woods, and plants.5 The rock whence it is born 
may be the stone from which he is struck out or the cloud: he dwells also in 
man as animal heat, in beast and birds, in biped and quadruped.® He is the 
germ therefore of all that is. 

The three births of Agni give rise to the legend of his three brothers, or his 
brothers generically, who again with him make up the four Hotrs, of whom 
three die according to the Kathaka Samhita.’ The legend of death seems 
purely imaginative. Of the gods Varuna is once his brother, and Indra is his 
twin brother. From Indra Agni borrows, as we have seen, some of his feats, 
such as vanquishing the Panis. In one hymn Agni is mentioned with Soma. 
He lends himself also to identifications with other gods: thus in the evening 
he is Varuna, rising in the morning Mitra, as Savitr he traverses the air, as 


1 Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, pp. 112f.; * Arische Religion, ii. 487 f. 
Hardy, Ved.-brahm. Periode, p. 64; ‘* RV.vi.2.3; cf. AB. ii. 34. 
Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth.i. 368; ii.129ff. °° RV.ii.1.1. 

* It is connected with the dead, and they ‘°* RV. x. 5.1; AV. iii, 21.2; xii. 1. 19; 
with the winds and the air. Hence it peri tse Ans be ae: (eho Be 
corresponds to the aerial, as the Aha- 7 xxv. 7. Cf. TS. ii. 6. 6; Brhaddevata, 
vaniya to the celestial Agni. vii. 61 with Macdonell’s note, 


158 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


Indra he illumines the sky ; so the Atharvaveda! tells us. He has various 
forms and many names, he embraces all the gods, and once even in the 
Rigveda 2 he is successively identified with twelve gods and five goddesses. 

Agni is not without martial traits, but his activity is quite different from 
that of Indra, who wars on the Asuras and on the Dasas. Agni is in place 
of that the destroyer of the demons; with iron teeth he consumes the 
sorcerers, he drives away the goblins, he is the slayer of Raksases par 
excellence. Indra borrows this feature of his character from him, and it is also 
attributed to the Acvins, Brhaspati, and Soma, but the primary claim of fire 
to destroy the wizards and the demons is an obvious one, and recorded by 
anthropology ? over all the earth. It is also most strongly attested in the ritual. 

The domestic side of the fire worship is revealed mainly by the constant 
reference to Agni as the friend in the homes of men, whence comes his de- 
scription as father, or brother, or son, or even mother. He has the epithet 
domestic, and is styled lord of the house. He is the immortal who abides 
among mortal in human habitations. He is further the protector of settlers. 
the man who makes niortals to settle down, and he is the lord of the clan 
(vicpati). The close relation of men to him is attested by the fact that we hear 
expressly of the Agni of Bharata, of Devavata, of Divodiasa, of Trasadasyu, 
and of Vadhryacva. His relation tothe Angirases and the Bhrgus may have 
been mythical, but were not so conceived in all probability in Vedic times, 
and he certainly stood in close relation to families like the Vasisthas. His 
connexion with Aryan settlement is told clearly in the legend of the advance of 
the Aryans to the east under the guidance of Gotama Rahigana and Videgha 
Mathava,‘ the latter of whom has been compared rashly with Prometheus ; 
the story preserves in the clearest way possible the record of the essential 
connexion between the introduction of the fire cult, and the advance of 
Aryan settlement and of Aryan culture. 

The ritual hardly gives a clear picture of these aspects of the character of 
Agni as the domestic friend and father, and as the protector and leader of the 
people. In it stress is laid in the main on the ritual of the three fires of the 
more elaborate sacrifices performed for an individual, and this elaboration is 
old, since in the Rigveda, while the name of only one of the later fires expressly 
occurs, that of the Garhapatya, there are references to the later practice of 
transporting the fire from one altar to another: thus Agni is said to be led 
round, to go round the sacrifice three times, to be led east and then west. But 
the importance of the domestic fire, which can be assumed for the earliest 
period, and which is preserved in some degree in the domestic ritual, is also 
attested by the fact that in the later ritual, and perhaps also in the earlier, the 
fire was first placed on the Garhapatya altar, a name which indicates that the 


a xiii. B. 118. 97-9) lays stress on the function of fire 
Trilby Th See as burning the wild and preparing the 
* Frazer, Balder the Beautiful, i. 325 ff. way for agriculture, the value of which 
4 


CB. 1. 4.1.10; von Negelein (VOJ. xviii. in India is almost unlimited. 


Chap. 10] Agni 159 


real domestic fire was the starting-point of the late development. There are 
fainter traces of the worship of fire not merely by an individual, but as the fire 
of the clan or community. In the later ritual! we hear of the fire of the 
Sabha and the Avasatha, which were respectively the council-house and a 
place of reception for those who came to the Sabha, as it seems, and it may be 
conjectured from the fact that the word Sabhya as an epithet of fire is found 
in the Atharvaveda,? though not in the Rigveda, that we are entitled to con- 
ceive of the fire as being lighted in the Sabha for the cult of the clan or com- 
munity on the solemn occasions of the meeting of the people in council. There 
are parallels among other peoples of the Indo-European stock, and among the 
Iranians where such fires as those of the head of the clan and of the canton 
were known,® but in the case of the Rigveda, the traces are scanty, unless 
stress can be laid on the term ‘ lord of the clan’ applied to the god, and the 
title of king of the clans of men. It is, however, notorious that the Sabha, 
which appears as a real institution in the Rigveda, in the later period disappears, 
and is reduced at most to a small council, first of warriors and priests and then 
of priests only,‘ so that it is possible that an earlier public cult disappeared in 
the course of time. Analogy suggests this conclusion, which is merely rendered 
doubtful by the imperfection of the evidence which can be adduced to prove 
the positive existence of the cult. 

On the other hand we have abundant references to the activities of Agni as 
a sacrificer, and he serves as the model for sacrificers. He is an essential 
element in the transmission of the sacrifice to the gods who cannot enjoy it 
without him. On the one hand he brings the gods down to the sacrifice and 
seats them on the strew that they may enjoy the food and drink offered. On 
the other hand he bears the oblation to the gods in the heaven. In either case 
he is constantly serving as an envoy between the gods and men, and is 
especially often called the messenger of men, though also that of Vivasvant. 
The Yajurveda ° elevates him into the messenger of the gods, and places over 
against him Kavya Ucanas as the messenger of the Asuras. A Brahmana ® 
deals with him, not as the messenger of, but as the path leading to the gods. 
He is called the Hotr, the Adhvaryu, the Brahman, and Purohita of the gods, 
thus combining in himself all the activities of the human priest. He is thus 
the one most fitted to worship the gods, he makes the oblations fragrant. But 
there is also a tradition that he wearied of his office, and required to be 
induced by promise of rich reward to be the bearer of the oblation.’? It 
seems that he had to be found in the waters and the plants, and that he was 


PeADCS2 1 Venl 9ai & Stas CO vy. 95.20 ff, devana, Amantrana). 
Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. ii. 118, 126; * Geiger, Ostir. Kult., p. 472. 
contra, Caland, VOJ. xxiii. 59 as to ‘4 Macdonelland Keith, Vedic Indeza, ii. 426, 
Avasathya. 427 ; Foy, Die kénigliche Gewalt, p. 10. 
* xix. 55) 63) cfvil. 10.7 (Garhapatya, ° TS.ii. 5. 8.5. 
Ahavaniya, Daksinagni, Sabha, Aman- °* TB. ii. 4. 1. 6. 
trana) with KS. vi. 8 (Odanapacana, 7 RV. x. 51-8; Oldenberg, ZDMG. xxxix. 
Garhapatya, Ahavaniya, Madhyadhi- V4, th 


160 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


reluctant to undertake the duties. Hillebrandt,! who thinks that the reluctance 
was connected with the death of his brothers, which is not, however, quite 
clearly referred to in the Rigveda and which may be only a later myth, and of 
independent origin, deduces from the story the view that it refers to the 
contrast between the two periods of the year, the northern and the southern 
course of the sun, Uttarayana and Daksinayana, Devayana and Pitryana, 
and that the legend explains the winning back of Agni at the end of the 
southern course of the sun, at the period of the winter solstice. He inter- 
prets the waters into which Agni retires as the fate of the sun at the winter 
solstice, an idea which, however, in India he considers to have been absorbed 
in that of the rainy season. The conjecture unhappily lacks any verisimilitude : 
the picture of the bringing of Agni to work seems no more than the conception 
of an individual poet of the constant theme of the mode, in which Agni comes 
to be employed as the sacrificer on earth. 

In connexion with the sacrifice three forms of Agni are distinguished in the 
Yajurveda,? the eater of raw flesh, the eater of corpses, and the sacrificial, 
and this distinction is perfectly well known in the Rigveda ° so far as concerns 
the Agni which bears the offering, and the Agni which devours the bodies of 
the dead. The term kravydd alternates in the Rigveda with kravyavdhana, 
later kavyavdhana, and a fire named kavyavdhana, appears as invoked with 
Yama at an offering to the Manes, which is performed on the afternoon of the 
new moon sacrifice at the last of the four-monthly offerings. From these facts 
Hillebrandt deduces the theory that from the fire, with which the dead was 
burned, there was taken a brand to rekindle the fire for the Manes, which 
he believes to have existed in the time of the Rigveda under the title of the 
Naracansa.4 The procedure is clearly wholly contrary to the spirit of the 
ritual, which regards death as requiring the extinction of all fires which are 
made thereby impure, and the evidence adduced for the theory is obviously 
inadequate to make it even plausible. 

Another division of the forms of Agni is given by the Taittiriya Samhita,® 
where the Agni which bears the oblation is distinguished from that which 
bears the funeral offering, called kavyavdhana, and that associated with the 
goblins (saharaksas). 

Asasacrificer Agni has this advantage over the human sacrificer that he does 
not make mistakes, and if he errs in any way he can put allright. Hence heis all 
knowing, the sage, possessed of all wisdom, and exclusively bears the epithet 
Jatavedas,* used about 120 times of him in the Rigveda and explained there as 
he who knows all generations, though some modern scholars prefer the sense 
‘having innate wisdom’. The priest prays, therefore, to him to accord him 
power of memory and wisdom. He produces wisdom, and is himself eloquent, 
? Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. ii. 187 ff. Von *° x. 16.9. 

Schroeder (Arische Religion, ii. 523) ‘* Op. cit. ii. 98-107, 107-10. Cf. Oldenberg, 

compares Apollonine legend, but with- FY ., e215 fy 

out plausibility. Poll. 5. '8.'6: 
ot hb Boke 6 SBE. xxvi. pp. xxxif. 


Chap. 10] Agni 161 


and a cause of eloquence in others. In all other matters too he befriends his 
worshippers, he gives food, wealth, long life, he defeats enemies, and demons : 
even in battle he leads the van, which may be a reference to the carrying 
of fire before the host in its onslaught. He is also occasionally given the power 
to remit sin, to make guiltless before Aditi, to avert the anger of Varuna,? 
and in the later texts he is said to free from the crimes committed by man’s 
father and mother.? 

Agni is also as a great god magnified by being declared to be above all the 
gods: Varuna, Mitra, the Maruts, and all the gods worship him. He delivers 
the gods in battle, he defeats the Dasyus for the Aryan, he vanquished the 
Panis and is even called breaker of forts and Vrtra-slayer, but these aspects of 
his are really derived from Indra. He measures out the air and supports 
the vault of heaven like all the greater deities, but he has a special function 
of his own, the strengthening of the sun when at the Agnihotra in the morning 
he is produced.? This is recognized occasionally in the Rigveda and quite 
frankly in the Brahmana literature. But in many cases the two acts are 
regarded merely as simultaneous, and the later texts * discuss the question 
whether the Agnihotra is to be offered just before or just after the sun rise. 

Agni is said to have produced men as also are other gods, but this relation- 
ship is neither often mentioned nor prominent. It is not probable that it 
stood in any special relation to the act of producing Agni from the fire sticks, 
though that act was naturally enough compared to the production of life : 
it lies rather in his close association with the worship of the family, which 
brings him into close contact with men. 

The derivation of Agni’s name, Latin ignis, Lithuanian ugnis, is un- 
certain, though connexion with aj, ‘ drive ’, is not impossible. In the Avesta 
the name is unknown as such and it does not appear among the Mitanni gods, 
which speaks in favour of the view that it is a specific development of the 
Indian priest.° But the worship of fire itself, apart from the special concep- 
tion of it as Agni, is undoubtedly strongly marked in the period of the unity 
of the Indo-Iranians. The fire in the Avesta is the centre of a strong and 
developed ritual: the fire priests Athravans are clearly the same in origin 
as the Vedic Atharvans, and Atar must have been conceived as a great and 
powerful god, giver of food, of fame, of offspring, the friend of the house, the 
repeller of foes, probably known as in the lightning and the plant-born forms. 
Oldenberg ® holds that, as in Greece and in Rome Hestia’ and Vesta are 


LUV IVa loc aeuvils OO sel Ve 14. perience of the Roman People, pp. 73-79) 

PEAV eV GOs 4ce Casall aver basogsAs treats her as essentially Roman. So 

* Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda*, pp. 109, 110. also Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, 

* AB. v. 30 ff. v. 364; Greece and Babylon, p. 1338. 

® Oldenberg, JRAS. 1909, p. 1096. Cf. von Schroeder, Arische Religion, ii. 

* Rel. des Veda’, p. 102. Kretschmer (Gesch. 584. For the Ugnis szventa of the 
der griech. Sprache, pp. 162 ff.) argues Lithuanians see ibid. ii. 579 f. 


that Vesta is a mere borrowing from 7 Feist, Kultur der Indogermanen, p. 526. 
Greece ; Warde Fowler (Religious Ex- 


ll [x.0.s. 31] 


162 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


feminine, there cannot have been an early Indo-European worship of fire of 
any distinct character. This is true so far as the personification of the fire is 
concerned, but the close connexion of the fire with the home which is em- 
phasized by these two faiths, and which is also in harmony with the indica- 
tions of Vedic religion, suggests that the cult of fire must have been a very 
real one in the Indo-European period, a conclusion the more natural if, as 
is probable, the original home of the Indo-European is to be placed in a com- 
paratively cold climate.! The stress laid on the fire in India would, therefore, 
be changed in emphasis, as not the domestic, but the sacrificial fire became 
the more important in a land where the sun provided for many things which 
elsewhere fire was required to accomplish. 


§2. Brhaspati and other forms of Agni 


Brhaspati is a god of much importance in the eyes of the Rigveda, since 
it devotes to him eleven hymns and mentions him, under that name or as 
Brahmanaspati, about 170 times. He forms with Indra a pair in two hymns. 
But his character appears very clearly as a compound of the activities of 
other gods. Thus his appearance is like that of Agni: he has seven mouths, 
seven rays, a beautiful tongue, he is bright, pure, ruddy, and clear-voiced. He 
has sharp horns and a hundred wings; he carries an iron axe, wrought by 
Tvastr, or a golden hatchet, and rides on a car with ruddy steeds. But he is 
marked out by having a bow whose string is Rta, which here doubtless refers 
to the holy rite, the sacrifice, showing that his weapons are also priestly. He 
/ is said to have been born from great light in the highest heaven, and with 
_ thunder to have dispelled the darkness, but also to be the half of the two 
worlds or of Tvastr, and he is the producer of the gods. 

Brhaspati is especially the divine priest ; he is the Purohita, but also the 
Brahman, and the Brahmanas constantly play on his position as the Brahman 
priest or the Brahman, ‘ the holy power’, of the gods. In the later texts as 
Brahman he is probably denoted as the technical priest of that name, who 
oversees the sacrifice and, like Agni, is able by his invention to make good any 
defects which he may observe in the sacrifice. In the Rigveda the technical 
sense is doubtful: the. Brahmanacchahsin priest may, however, be meant in 
one or two cases., He sings hymns, metre is his, he has singing hosts and 
thence is called Ganapati, a term once given to Indra. He is, as his name 
denotes, the lord of prayer, the generator of prayer which he communicated to 


* Cf. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der theft of fire (Prometheus, Loki) is only 
Romer’, p. 142; E. Meyer, Gesch. des faintly seen in the figure of Matarig¢van 
Alt’ I, ii. p. 872. Von Schroeder’s (Chap. 9, § 6) and possibly that of Bhrgu 
views as to Apollo and the Charites (Chap. 19, § 1). 

(cf. Agni’s flames as maidens) are in- ? Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, pp. 38 ff., cor- 
teresting (Arische Religion, ii. 497 ff.), recting Geldner, Ved. Stud. ii. 148 ff. ; 


but not conclusive. The legend of the GN. 1916, pp. 7381 ff. 


Chap. 10] Brhaspati and other forms of Agni 163 


men: hence in the later texts he is lord of speech, Vacaspati, a name which 
is specially his in post-Vedic literature. 

Brhaspati is often named beside Agni, but he is not rarely identified with 
him :? he is given three abodes, is called son of strength, associated with 
Naracansa, Matari¢van and the Angirases. He is lord of the dwelling, while 
Agni for his part is called lord of prayer. Like Agni, however, he is associated 
with Indra, and becomes specially connected with the myth of the overthrow 
of Vala and the release of the cows, in which he acts with his singing host. He 
splits the mountains, drives out and distributes the cows, and the Atharva- 
veda ? makes his conquest of Vala proverbial. In winning the cows he finds 
the light, the Dawn, and Agni. He is also said to roar like a bull, to shatter 
forts, to overthrow Vrtras and conquer foes. He is even given the epithet of 
bolt-bearer and is made a friend of the Maruts. He has also the more general 
traits of being a bestower of wealth and long life, a remover of disease, and 
a father. He stimulates also the life of the plants, through him the sun and 
moon rise alternately, and in the Yajurveda ® he is made the regent of the 
constellation Tisya, while in post-Vedic literature he is the ruler of Jupiter. 

It is clear that the name was held by the Rigvedic poets to be derived from 
a word brh in the sense of Brahman, prayer, as it is parallel with Brahmanas- 
pati, and the meaning of the name is, therefore, lord of prayer or devotion. 
The great similarity to Agni, which makes Brhaspati in much merely his 
double, can best be explained on the theory that Brhaspati is Agni in his 
priestly form, but that the connexion was one early developed. The most 
plausible of alternative views is undoubtedly that of Roth,® which takes the 
god as a direct personification of the power of devotion, and Oldenberg ® 
develops a similar idea in insisting that Brhaspati is the typical priest who 
assists in the feats of the gods by his songs and his prayers. In that case it is 
necessary to suppose that he has won to himself the attributes of the gods by 
his close association with them in their activities, a view to which there is no 
good ground of objection in itself, but which is on the other hand not in any 
way more probable than the idea that the name was at first an epithet of the 
god. On the other hand Weber’ and Hopkins ® start from the marked 
similarity to Indra in the warlike deeds of Brhaspati, and make him out to be 
derived from the character of Indra modified under the views of the priesthood : 9 
this view is also legitimate, but is subject to the objection that on the whole 
it is easier to explain the development, if the Agni side be taken as the standing 


1 RV.i. 88.183 iii. 26.2; v. 48. 12. 5 ZDMG. i. 73. 
PIX, Oa oe 6 Op. cit., pp. 66-8; SBE. xlvi. 94; GN. 
2 -TS.iv. 4.10.1; TB.iii. 1.1.5; ef. Keith, 1915, pp. 196 ff. 

JRAS. 1911, pp. 794 ff. 1 Vadjapeya, p. 15. 


4 Macdonell, Ved. Myth., p. 108. Hille- * Rel. of India, p. 136. 
brandt (Ved. Myth. i. 408) took brhas— ° Their preference is visible in AB. vii. 38 


as growth, but (KI. Ausg., p. 60) (cf. KU. iii. 1 ; TS. ii. 5. 1), where insult 
accepts * das magische Fluidum ritueller to him is censured in Indra ; cf. Weber, 
Zauberkraft.’ Cf. Chap. 27, § 2. Rajasiiya, pp. 109 f. 


Eis 


164 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


point in the discussion of the nature of the god. It is, however, impossible to 
accept the efforts of Hillebrandt! to prove that Brhaspati is the moon, 
especially as a god of magic and the magic southern fire; the long list of 
parallels with Soma which he adduces will on investigation be found merely to 
refer either to points which are commonplaces of many Vedic gods, or to points 
in which Agni and Soma agree. The fact that Brhaspati produces effects on the 
plants is wholly inadequate to make out that he is a moon god, for there is no 
very clear trace in the Rigveda of the doctrine that all growth or even that 
most growth is due to the action of the moon: the heat and the water which 
are characteristic of Agni are essentially connected with plant life. 

The chief importance of Brhaspati lies in the fact that he is in the earlier 
Vedic period the root from which sprung the god Brahman, who appears 
first in the later stratum of the Brahmana texts.? 

While the identity of Brhaspati with Agni has been obscured by the 
development of the character of the deity, the identity of Vaicvanara is 
made absolutely certain by the constant mention of Agni under that epithet 
in the Rigveda. It denotes ‘pertaining to all men’, and is normally believed to 
refer to Agni in all his aspects, celestial as well as terrestrial. In point of fact, 
however, the mention of Vai¢vanara is mainly in certain definite contexts. He 
appears in connexion with the descent of celestial fire and the agency of the 
Bhrgus and Mataricvan, and once * Agni Vaicvanara is styled Matari¢van. In 
the Brahmanas Vai¢vanara has a direct reference to the sun in the fact that 
it is said that Agni Vaicvanara is the year, and that cakes offered on twelve 
potsherds are frequently presented to him. Vaicvanara appears also in com- 
parison with the Maruts as connected with the princely rank: the Dhruva 
cup which is offered to Vaicvanara is guarded by a prince,* and is employed 
in a variety of rites for the preservation or restoration of lordly power.> It 
is clear also that in these texts the fire specially related to Vaicvanara is the 
Ahavaniya, so that we have a good warrant for seeing in the god a form of the 
sun, which on earth has a counterpart in the Ahavaniya fire. This explains 
well the controversy which existed even in early days regarding the nature 
of the god: it was maintained by the Yajhikas that Vaicvanara was the sun, 
while Cakapiini, with whom in effect Yaska ® agrees, held that he was the 
terrestrial Agni. Vaicvanara would then be a suitable epithet of the sun, 
who is common to all men and seen of all. 

The name Naracansa is also used of the god, and with it is connected one of 
the great ritual distinctions of the Vedic ritual: some families took in the 
Apri hymns, used at fore-offerings in the ritual of the animal sacrifice, a verse 


» Ved. Myth. i. 606 ff.; ii. 102 ff.; (KI. * Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. ii. 112 ff. He sees 


Ausg.), pp. 60 ff.; contra, C. Strauss, in Vaigvanara’s connexion with the 

Brhaspati im Veda (1905) ; Oldenberg, Pirus and the Bharatas, and in RV. i. 

GN. 1915, pp. 200 ff. 59. 13 11. 28. 4: v. 1. 10, traces of a 
* Keith, Aitareya Aranyaka, p. 350. kowv7 €a7ia of the Vedic tribes, but this is 
* RV. iii. 26. 2. implausible. 


* ApCS. xii. 16. * Nir, vii. 23 and 31, 


Chap. 10] Brhaspati and other forms of Agni 165 
addressed to Naracansa, others took in place Tantinapat, while only a few 
families, such as that of Medhatithi Kanva and Dirghatamas Aucathya, solved 
the dispute by including invocations of both in the hymns.! In the long run 
the tradition of the Jamadagni? family prevailed and their invocation of 
Taniinapat was accepted, the Vasistha family, however, remaining faithful 
to their invocation of Naracansa. The god has little that is characteristic 
about him in the Rigveda : he thrice a day sprinkles the sacrifice with honey ; 
he anoints the three heavens and the gods. Soma is said to go between 
Naracansa and the celestial one, which may refer to the contrast of terrestrial 
and celestial fires. In the Brahmanas there is more distinct information : 
five cups are styled Naracansa, two at each of the first two pressings and one 
at the third: after being tasted by the priests they are placed on the south 
oblation-holder.* The epithet ‘drunk by Naracansa’ is used of Soma in 
connexion with an offering to the Fathers, and the connexion of Naracansa 
and the Fathers appears in one passage in the Rigveda,* which may conceiv- 
ably point to the later ritual having been in this respect known to the Rigveda. 
Moreover in two hymns Naracansa seems to be identified with Brhaspati.® 
On this ground Hillebrandt ® concludes that Narac¢ansa is a designation of a 
moon god of the dead, equivalent to Brhaspati, and of the Daksina fire for the 
Fathers. He strengthens this view by pointing out that in a Brahmana text ” 
the term three-headed and six-eyed is applied to Naracansa, which would seem 
to identify him with Vievariipa, son of Tvastr, who, like Brhaspati, is in his 
opinion the moon as the home of the Fathers. The conjecture, however, 
is too bold, and rests upon the mistaken identification of Brhaspati and the 
moon, and the still less plausible version of Vigvaripa as the moon. It neces- 
sitates also the making of the word to mean ‘he who praises men’, applicable 
to a judge of the Fathers, instead of ‘ praise of men’ in the sense ‘* praised by 
men’, which is the more natural sense. The comparison of the Avestan 
Nairyosanha leads to no further conclusion: traces of connexion with the 
Fathers are seen by Hillebrandt, but they are very faint, and his chief certain 
characteristic is that of messenger, which makes him merely a normal form of 


(GN. 1915, p. 222) suggests a possible 
reference to Narac¢ansa’s partaking of 
the three Savanas daily, duplicated by 
the twin offices of Hotr and Udgatr 
(i. 185. 9). 

® Macdonell, Ved. Myth., p. 100. Thealter- 
native is to regard the praise as dei- 


1 Naracansa occurs in RV. ii. 3; v. 5; 
vii. 2; x. 70; Taninapat, i. 188; iii. 
4; ix.5; x.110; both, i. 13 and 142. 

HV. -xe 110: 

AB. ii. 24.3; ApQS. xii. 25. 25-27. 

x. 57. 8. 5 RV.i. 18; x. 182. 

Ved. Myth. ii. 98 ff.; iii. 445-50; (KI. 


Oo @ © wo 


7 


Ausg.), pp. 58 ff. He quotes RV. i. 95. 
1; 96.5; x. 88. 6 as proofs of Agni as 
the moon, also Indragni as deity of the 
new moon (sun and moon), but im- 
plausibly. For spirit connexion with the 
moon he cites RV. x. 90.13; AA. ii. 4. 
Lee BAUM 8.17) illaet os 


MS. iv. 13. 8; TB. iii. 6. 18. Oldenberg 


fied. Cf. Oldenberg, GN. 1915, pp. 210- 
24. RV. x. 57.3 on this view alludes 
to the Fathers as authors of praises. 
But his denial of connexion with fire is 
implausible, in view of RV. iii. 29. 11 ; 
VS. xxvii. 13, &c., and the parallel of 
Nairyosanha (cf. Gray, Archiv fiir Rel. 
iii. 48; Giintert, Weltkénig, p. 287). 


166 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


Agni. It is impossible, therefore, to say more than that Naracansa is a form 
of Agni: Bergaigne? thinks that he is specifically a god of prayer like 
Brhaspati, and this accords with the identification of the two gods which 
seems certainly intended by the Vedic poets. 

Taniinapat is even more obscure than Naracansa. His name means either 
‘son of his self ’, a reference to the fact that Agni generates Agni, fire being 
sui generis, or ‘ own son ’, i. e. of the divine father as suggested by Bergaigne.? 
He is contrasted with Naracansa and Matari¢van as the divine embryo. The 
dawns kiss Agni, the Taniinapat of the ruddy one. He takes the sacrifice to 
the gods: Varuna, Mitra, Agni honour him thrice a day. Who is meant is 
impossible to say: Hillebrandt,? who once identified him with Agni as a 
guardian of the Soma and as lunar fire, has abandoned ‘ the suggestion: in the 
Brahmanas he is variously identified with summer and Indra, while in the 
ritual he plays a part only in the Taniinaptra ceremony in which the patron 
and the celebrants of the rite engage not to injure one another : in this rite he 
serves, it seems, as the god who watches over the fulfilment of the mutual 
oaths of fidelity. 

Closely connected with Agni are other figures: the gods Mataricvan, 
Ahi Budhnya, Aja Ekapdad are in some degree associated with him, and the 
priestly families of the Atharvans, Bhrgus, and Angirases are closely related 
to him: they will be considered later together with the other families of 
priests, to whom they are perhaps more closely related in origin than to the 
god himself. 


§ 3. The God Soma 


The poetry of the Rigveda is mainly connected with the Soma sacrifice, and 
this fact must be borne in mind in estimating the importance of the god Soma. 
In its present form the whole of the ninth book of the Samhita is devoted to 
him and he has six hymns in other books : moreover he is invoked in parts of 
four or five others, and also as a joint deity with Indra, Agni, Piisan and 
Rudra. The number of times his name occurs is incapable of accurate 
calculation, as the name is constantly mentioned without it being possible 
to say whether the god is really referred to. 

Soma resembles Agni in the fact that the anthropomorphism of the god is 
constantly coming into collision with the actual form of the plant and thus is 
prevented from attaining any clear development. Hence myths of a concrete 
character cannot spring up around the name, and the deeds which are given 
to Soma are simply borrowed by him from the other gods, especially Indra and 
Agni, with whom he is very nearly associated, since the former is the great 
Soma drinker and the latter for his part is a god of ritual like Soma. But on 


1 Rel. Véd. i. 305-8. poetry, is made by Oldenberg, GN. 
* Op. cit. ii. 99. An implausible suggestion 1915, p. 214, n. 4. 

to assimilate Taninapat to Naracansa ‘* Ved. Myth. i. 339. 

as praise, as incorporating the ancestral ‘ Op. cit. ii. 110-12. 


Chap. 10] The God Soma 167 


the other hand the Soma is the great object of priestly interest, and the most 
elaborate imagery seems to have formed round the simple operations of 
pressing and straining the juice: the monotony of the ninth book is only 
equalled by its obscurity in detail, and, it must be admitted, much of the 
obscurity hides no real depth of thought but merely puerile fancies. 

For the juice pressed from the Soma plant the Rigveda offers various 
names, such as andhas, applied also to the whole plant, pitu, and often mada, 
the intoxicating beverage ; it is even called food, and very often honey, a 
term which is applied also to milk and to ghee. 

Frequently it is Amrta, ‘ ambrosia’ the drink of immortality, or milk, or 
the wave from the stalk, or the juice of honey. A common name of the plant 
and the drink is Indu, the bright drop. The plant is brown, ruddy or most 
often tawny, and, in accord with this, it is the rule that the cow, with which in 
the rite the Soma is purchased, must be brown or ruddy, and that any sub- 
stitutes used for Soma must be similar to it in colour. The plant is made to 
yield its juice by being pounded with a stone or pressed with stones, which 
lie on a skin and seem in contravention to the ritual usage to be placed on 
the altar.1_ The stones are called adri or grdvan, the latter usually employed 
with verbs meaning to speak and therefore more mythical than the word adrv. 
It is almost, if not quite certain, that the extraction of the juice by pounding 
with a pestle in a mortar was known to the Rigveda ? as well as the normal 
pounding with stones which is repeatedly mentioned: the Avestan ritual 
knows the use of mortar and pestle in connexion with the Haoma. When 
pounded the juice is strained through a sieve, which is called a skin, hair, wool, 
filter, or metaphorically perhaps ridge. In this state Soma wins the title 
Pavamana, under which, as becoming clear, it is celebrated in the ninth book 
of the Rigveda. In the purified form it is called Cukra or Cuci, ‘ the bright,’ 
and is offered in this shape to Indra and Vayu, who is the drinker of the pure 
Soma par excellence, a fact which is confirmed by the ritual where the un- 
mixed Soma is reserved for Indra and Vayu, while it is mixed with milk for 
Mitra and Varuna and with honey for the A¢vins. It is clear that after the 
purifying process Soma was often mixed with water: so in the ritual the 
pressing is followed by the mixing of water (ddhavana). Water however does 
not bear the technical name of decir, which is reserved for the milk, fresh or 
curdled, and the barley with which Soma clothes himself as with a garment. 
The refreshing of the stalks of the plants with water, which is known in the 
later ritual as the Apyayana, is possibly but not certainly, referred to in the 
Rigveda. The three offerings of the Rigveda * correspond in some measure at 
least to those of later times: Indra is present at both the morning pressing 


1 Cf. RV. v. 31.12; Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. field, pp. 225-50) holds that mortar and 
i. 179 ff.; Oldenberg, Rgveda-Noten, i. pestle were normally used, but does 
328. not prove this theory. 


2 RV. i. 28; Hillebrandt, op. cit. i. 158 ff. * Bergaigne (Rel. Véd. i. 179) thinks the 
Oliphant (Studies in honor of Bloom- three tubs mythical, but cf. TS.iii.2.1.2. 


168 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part IL 


and at the midday pressing which is his alone, whence it later has a Castra 
called Niskevalya, and the Rbhus have a place in the third offering. The 
term ‘ of three abodes’ given to the god may allude to three tubs of the ritual, 
but this is uncertain, and the same doubt attends the three Soma lakes, of 
which mention is made, as drunk by Indra. The three backs of the god are 
probably the three admixtures. 

So much of the mythology of Soma is clear enough: the actual plant lies 
immediately behind the god, and explains his characteristics. But there 
are other traits which show that the plant is a very powerful one. The waters 
which are mixed with the Soma give rise to many metaphors, and Soma is said 
to be the producer of the waters, and to be born of the waters: he streams rain 
from the sky, and he flows clearly with a stream of honey like the cloud full 
of rain. He is the father of the waters as well as their son, and the Soma seems 
in some cases to be deemed to be rain. The Catapatha Brahmana ! directly 
identifies the ambrosia with the water. The sound of the pouring of the Soma 
is likened to thunder, and lightning is associated with the process. Again, as 
a thunderer and a loud-sounding god, Soma is a bull and the waters are his 
cows : he fertilizes the waters. He is a sharp-horned bull. But he is also for 
his swift flow a steed or bird, and again he is identified for his bright colour 
with the sun, and made to dispel the darkness and defeat it. In all this 
there is clearly evident the fact that Soma is no mere plant on earth, but is in 
addition a great celestial deity. 

The same double side of Soma appears in the legends which make him 
drunk by the gods as well as by men. He is for both the drink of immortality, 
which makes them live for ever. In less exalted phrase he is of high value in 
healing, he makes the blind to see, and the lame to walk. He even destroys 
sin and promotes truth: in vino veritas. He inspires speech and so Soma is 
lord of speech: he has all wisdom and knowledge. He surveys all things with 
his thousand eyes. A votary declares ? *‘ We have drunk the Soma, we have 
become immortal, we have attained the light, we have known the gods.’ 
The Fathers too love the Soma with whom they sometimes go, and who in 
their life excited them to their great deeds. 

The god who is most closely united with Soma is Indra, who needs the 
drink to strengthen him to perform the slaying of Vrtra: hence the drink is 
called the bolt, and Soma even takes the title of Vrtra-slayer. Again Indra 
makes the sun to rise when he has drunk Soma, so that Soma is credited with 
this feat also. From this it is a short step to becoming a great cosmic power, 
who generates the two worlds and wields universal sway. He rides in a 
chariot with Indra, and is connected with the Maruts. He becomes a great and 
terrible warrior with a bow and shaft: he (alone of Vedic gods *) is described 
as killing the wicked and he also kills the demons. The Yajurveda ‘ says that 
Brahmans who drink the Soma can slay their foes by their mere look. Through 

a xi. 5.4. 5. > RV. ix. 28. 6. 
2 RV. viii. 48. 3. MISE AT Pek 


Chap. 10] The God Soma 169 


Indra he is associated with Vayu, and, more superficially, he is connected with 
Pisan and Rudra. 

The dualism in the character of Soma appears in the two quite different 
accounts of his birth, in heaven and on the mountains. The mountain birth 
of Soma is made more precise by the epithet Maujavata, which seems to point 
to mount Mufijavant, and the Avesta declares that Haoma grows in the 
mountains. But it is by no means certain that the rock, from which the eagle 
brought Soma, is to be so taken; it seems rather to refer to the clouds and to 
point to his celestial form. Of the celestial abode of Soma there is abundant 
evidence of all kinds : he is the bird in the heaven, his home is in the highest 
heaven, but the contact with the terrestrial is clear in the fact that Soma going 
over the filter is also Soma on the summit (sdnw) of the sky. 

The bringing of Soma from the mountains was no doubt a physical act, 
performed regularly by the priests or on their behalf: the ritual shows that 
the tradition of using Soma was kept up, when the priests had long left the 
place where the Soma grew, and when it had to be brought from afar off. The 
sacred character of the plant, however, vindicated itself in a curious manner. 
It had come to be necessary to purchase the drink, or rather the plants whence 
the juice could be extracted, but the ritual shows the Soma seller ! regarded 
as a disgraceful creature from whom is taken away, with blows, the price, a 
cow, paid to him for thestalks. On the celestial side there stands the Rigvedic 
myth of the descent of Soma which is brought down by an eagle to the earth. 
The myth is told at some length in two hymns of the Rigveda ? and referred 
to in others. The eagle was restrained by a hundred iron castles, but it none 
the less secured the Soma and fled with it from the sky: the archer Kreanu, 
however, who saw the bird as it fled away shot at it and severed one feather : 
the Brahmanas® add that the feather or claw or the leaf of the shoot became a 
tree, the Parna or Palaca, or a porcupine. The eagle is in the legend repre- 
sented as bringing down the Soma for Indra, and Indra is once ‘ directly called 
an eagle, when seated at the Soma offering, but not in immediate connexion 
withthemyth. On the other hand Agni is called the eagle of heaven once® and 
often a bird ; the term eagle is applied in a Brahmana® to Agni as lightning, 
and from these data Bloomfield 7 derives the conclusion that the whole origin 
of the myth of the descent of Somais the lightning flash, which comes forth from 
the cloud, the castle of iron, and which brings down to the earth the refreshing 
rain. With this accords the fact that in one passage of the Rigveda ® the 
descents of the lightning and of Soma are combined. It is not, it should how- 
ever be noted, of much importance whether the eagle be treated as Agni or 
as Indra, since an essential feature of Indra is the lightning which breaks 


* Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. i. 69-82. ‘ RV. x. 99. 8. 

* iv. 26 and 27. 5 RV. vii. 15. 4. 

* Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, pp. 195 ff. ° TB. iii. 10. 5. 1. 
Cf. Charpentier, Die Suparnasage, chap. 7 JAOS. xvi. 1-24. 
V. ‘<1; 98.0. 


170 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


forth while the rain falls, and it is probable that, when he is hailed as an eagle 
at the Soma sacrifice, he is regarded as the bringer of the Soma. 

Soma is a plant, and the most lordly of all the plants, and therefore he is 
king of the plants: he is also the king of the gods, of the whole earth and of 
men, but the Yajurveda ! shows that the Brahmans had asserted that he was 
the only king of the Brahmans: at the royal consecration the other men might 
recognize the king, but to the Brahmans he was not announced as their king, 
who was Soma alone. Doubtless at this most sacred and trying moment of 
their inauguration kings had to accept theoretical claims of immunity from 
their control, which they knew how to value at their true worth for practical 
affairs. 

The connexion of Soma with the plants was, however, of high importance 
for his future as a god: the connexion of the moon with plant life seems to 
have been often noted by early peoples, and was very probably recognized by 
the Aryans in India; moreover the growth of the moon and its decline was 
significant of the same progress as the swelling up of the Soma shoots: the 
fiery clear drops of the Soma, as it fell from the plant, were likened to the 
rays of the moon reflected upon the water : the Soma had come to be held to 
be a bright deity. Hence it may be there rose the idea that the Soma was 
really at the same time the moon : it is asserted in the Chandogya Upanisad ? 
in so many words that the Soma is the moon and is the food of the gods and is 
drunk by them. The Brahmanas regularly identify Soma and the moon ; 
thus the Naksatras are said to have been the wives of king Soma, who, how- 
ever, preferred to stay with Rohini only, wherefore the other ladies went to 
their father, and, as a result, disease seized the king, who was fain to agree to 
live loyally with all his wives each in turn. The phases of the moon are 
explained by the fact that the gods and the Fathers eat the substance of the 
Soma which is ambrosia. In the Atharvaveda ‘ we find that Soma is several 
times certainly the moon. In the Rigveda itself by far the most certain case 
is the wedding hymn,® which is, however, by its confused character not an 
early hymn. There Soma is the husband of Stiirya, who is far more often 
connected with the Acvins, or occasionally with Pisan, and both these two 
gods and Pusan also are introduced into the hymn, as if in recognition of their 
claim to have share in the wedding. Here Soma is said to be in the lap 
of the stars, and a distinction is drawn between the Soma which the priests 
know and that which they crush. That the identification was priestly and 
late is here asserted as clearly as anything of the sort can be expected to be 
asserted. It is possible that there are some other references to the moon 
character of the Soma in the Rigveda, as when it is spoken of as a drop going 
to the ocean, looking with the eye of a vulture,® but the effort of deciding 
what are these passages is quite out of all proportion to the value of the results 


1 Weber, Rdjasiiya, p. 31. ‘vii. 01.8, 43: xi. 6.7. 
thy 1051s cf. CB. 4. 2.7 (BAU vie2s16.0) 9) RVs &.1 Gos 
3 Weber, Nawatra, ii. 274 ff. SILV. Xl zou. 


Chap. 10] The God Soma 171 


which can be obtained. In the chaos of the ideas of the ninth book of the 
Rigveda there are passages which may be referred to Soma as the moon, or at 
least to comparison of Soma and the moon, but it is a very significant fact 
that the commentators on the Rigveda, despite their familiarity with the moon 
theory of Soma, never identify the Soma there with the moon. 

In opposition to this theory Hillebrandt 1 insists that the moon nature of 
Soma exists throughout: that the deity is the moon sans phrase, but that in 
the moon there is an ambrosia which is eaten by the gods in heaven and in the 
form of the Soma plant is eaten by the men on earth, who in eating it thus, like 
the gods, partake of the substance of the moon. This god, he argues, was the 
greatest and most popular of all Vedic gods, and ranked even above Indra 
and far above the sun gods. He therefore treats, among others, Brhaspati as 
a moon god. The most serious objection to this view is the fact that, while 
in the later literature * the nature of Soma as the moon is apparent on every 
hand, in the Rigveda it can only be restored by conjecture, and there is a 
definite assertion in one hymn that the conception of Soma as the moon is 
mythic and known to the Brahmans only. Again, in the vast majority of 
passages, it is perfectly plain that the Soma plant and its qualities are referred 
to. If we could show ab eatra that the plant is also the moon, this would not 
be a fatal objection to the theory of Hillebrandt, but, as this cannot be done, 
and as the ordinary view that the plant is deified and made into a great god 
is adequate to account for the facts, it is an offence against sound principles 
of method to adopt any other theory. 

That the Soma cult goes back to the Avesta * is notorious ; it is there said 
to grow on a mountain watered by the rains of heaven: as Varuna is said to 
place it on rock, so a god places it on Mount Haraiti: it is brought by an eagle 
in the Rigveda from the sky: in the Avesta it is taken from its mountain by 
skilled birds. It is in both India and Iran the king of plants, it gives long life 
and removes death: it grows in the waters. It was pressed twice a day 
according to the Avesta : its yellow juice was mixed with milk. But the plant 
had also a celestial character, and that character distinguished it from the 
mere terrestrial plant. It is brought down from heaven and is a mighty 
king. Even the epithet ‘ slayer of Verethra ’ has been found applied to the 
Haoma. Beside minor similarities, which attach to any divine natures, there 
are found the most striking similarities in the legend of the preparers of the 
Soma: they are in the Avesta Vivanhvant, Athwya, and Thrita, while those 
of the Rigveda are Vivasvant and Trita Aptya. 

Soma is derived from the root su, and means merely the et drink, and 
there is no parallel word in the other Indo-European languages, so that it must 
be recognized that the Soma cult was a special Indo-Iranian innovation, 


1 Ved. Myth. i. 274, 309, 326, 340, 450; * E.g. KB. iv. 4; xii.5; TB.i. 4. 10. 7; 


ii. 209-45 ; (KI. Ausg.), pp. 76 ff. Cf. Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 38, n. 2. 
von Schroeder, Arische Religion, ii.462, * W. W. Wilson (AJP. xxx. 184 ff.) sees a 
656; Henry, Séma et Haoma (1907) ; Soma offering in a fragment of Alkman, 


Gray, Spiegel Memorial Vol., pp. 160 ff. but this is fanciful. 


172 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


presumably produced by the discovery of some plant which when pressed 
produced a juice pleasant to drink or at least intoxicating. It is also most 
probable that the plant grew only in some area which was far from the homes 
of the Vedic Indians: substitutes came freely to be used for it, and all efforts 
to decide precisely what the plant was have failed to achieve more than 
probable results.1. But the word madhu, ‘ honey,’ is cognate with the Greek 
methu and the Anglo-Saxon medu, and the parallelism of the legends of the 
eagle and Soma, the nectar-bringing eagle of Zeus, and the eagle, which 
fetched the mead and which was really Odin, is obvious and undeniable. The 
question, therefore, arises what was the mead which is thus conceived to have 
been brought down, and it seems difficult to deny that it was originally simply 
the water of the rain or the dew. This is certainly the natural way of inter- 
preting the myth of Soma and the eagle, and the change made in the concep- 
tion in the Indo-Iranian period would be merely that this rain would have been 
identified with the Soma drink, thus transforming the old myth into some- 
thing very important and real. If, as has been suggested, the old myth made 
the home of the mead in the moon,? the identification of Soma and the moon 
would be at once explained, but this is not at all clearly made out. 

Oldenberg, however, does not accept the view that the legend of the 
descent of Soma can be explained in this simple and satisfactory way, and he 
does not, therefore, adopt the same view as is here taken of the process by 
which the Soma came to be sacred. He would seem to hold that the rise of the 
Soma cult was independent at first of the older belief in the mead, and it 
is true that the Avesta does not actually apply the term mead to Haoma; 
it seems, however, much simpler to adopt the view that the mead was an 
Indo-European view, and that the identification of Soma with it, and, therefore 
the application to it of the Soma legend, were the immediate outcome of the 
discovery of the intoxicating drink. 


$4. The Rivers 


It is perhaps doubtful whether the rivers can claim to be regarded as among 
the great gods of the Rigveda, but their importance in the mind of the Vedic 
Indians was perhaps sufficient to justify their treatment in this place. One 
whole long hymn ® is accorded to the Sarasvati, and in two verses of it are 
enumerated her tributaries and other affluents, while the Vipac and Cutudri 
claim another hymn ‘ of some poetical beauty. By far the greatest of rivers 


1 Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. i.3 ff.; Macdonell fig-tree that drops Soma has a possible 
and Keith, Vedic Indea, ii.475; Havell parallelin the Germanic ash, Yggdrasill ; 
(JRAS. 1920, pp. 349 ff.) suggests the K. H. Meyer, Germ. Myth., p. 81. For 
millet of the eastern Himalayas ; B. L. further speculations see G. Dumézil, 
Mukherjee (ibid. 1921, pp. 239 ff.) bhang, Le Festin dImmortalité (AMG. xxxiv), 
but without proof. esp. Pt. II, chap. i; below, App. D. 

* Roscher, Nektar und Ambrosia, pp. 79 ff.; 3? RV. x. 75; ef. Stein, Bhandarkar Comm. 
Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, pp. 170 ff. ; Vol., pp. 21 ff. 


Henry, L’Agnistoma, pp. 470 ff. The ‘4 RV. iii. 33. 


Chap. 10] The Rivers 178 


is the Sarasvati, which has in all three hymns devoted to it: she flows from 
the mountains, tearing them down; she has seven sisters and is mother of 
streams: she is daughter of the lightning (pdvirav?) and has a spouse, who later 
is called Sarasvant. She is divine, she comes with the Fathers to the sacrifice, 
and is stated to be descended from the sky, an early anticipation of the com- 
mon Indian belief of the divine birth of the Ganges. She has other and more 
intimate connexions with human life: she bestows progeny, wealth, and im- 
mortality, she gave Vadhryacva a son ; she is terrible and a Vrtra-slayer, but 
to her worshippers a protector. 

Sarasvati is connected with Indra and with Pisan, but in the main with 
the Acvins: she takes part in the rite by which they heal Indra, and she is 
spoken of in the Yajurveda ! as the wife of the Acvins. She forms also one 
of the triad of goddesses Bharati, Ida, and Sarasvati, or Mahi, Hotra, and 
Sarasvati, who are invoked in the Apri hymns of the animal sacrifice : Ida is 
a mere abstraction of the idea of the sacrificial offering, and Mahi and Hotra 
are clearly deities of the same kind: Bharati, however, must refer to the lady 
of the Bharatas, and the identification is of first-rate importance as it enables 
us to decide which Sarasvati is meant in these cases. The Bharatas, we know, 
dwelt on the Sarasvati and the Drsadvati, and sacrifices on the Sarasvati are 
prescribed in the Brahmanas and the Siitras: the combination of the god- 
desses must have grown up when Sarasvati meant the stream which is 
connected with the Drsadvati.2 Nor is it at all improbable that the 
same river is meant in every or nearly every case: the older view * that 
Sarasvati meant the Indus, or the view’ that in any case it refers 
still as originally to the Harahvaiti cannot be supported by any conclusive 
proof: it is true that the present river Sarasvati is small, and loses itself in 
the sand, but it may well have been more important than this in the time 
of the Rigveda, and in any case there is no doubt of its holiness in the 
Brahmana period, a fact which really disposes of the argument against it, 
based on its size. 

In the Rigveda in Sarasvati we need not see anything more than a river 
goddess somewhat strongly anthropomorphized in certain details who inspires 
prayers of devotion. But in the Brahmanas she is connected with speech, 
perhaps because Vedic culture and poetry flourished specially there, and in the 
post- Vedic literature she is the goddess of eloquence and the wife of Brahman. 
The nearest approach to this is the statement of the Yajurveda ° that, when 
Indra was ill, Sarasvati by speech communicated vigour to him, where speech 


1 VS. xix. 12, 94. from the Babylonian Nin Ella, mother 

2 Max Miiller, SBE. xxxii. 60 ff. of waters. 

° Zimmer, Altind. Leben, p. 10. 5 CB. iii. 9.1.7; AB.iii. 1.10; PS. vii. 2.7. 

* Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. i. 99; iii. 374 ff. 4; MS. ili.6. 4; TB.i. 8.1; 4.2; AV. 
He takes the celestial Sarasvati as the Vib Lape LOS see Bev isteel ree nat 
milky way (i. 382, 383). Carnoy (Les Sarasvatiin RV. x. 17 is the river sever- 
Indo-Européens, p. 199) compares Ana- ing quick and dead, the later Vaitarani, 


hita in Iran and suggests borrowing is most implausible. 


174. The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


is merely her instrument, not her nature, and her healing power must rather be 
deemed to be due to her nature as the purifying water. 

Beside Sarasvati in one hymn ! we have an invocation of Sarasvant to give 
offspring, protection, and plenty: his fertilizing waters and breast are 
referred to. Agni as Sarasvant once appears as a giver of rain. It is hardly 
necessary to see in him more than a male counterpart of Sarasvati: there is 
nothing to support the more important character of guardian of the celestial 
waters which is accorded to him by Roth or the identification with Apam 
Napat proposed by Hillebrandt * and Hardy.? 

Other streams are addressed as great, such as Sarayi and Sindhu, and the 
conception of seven streams is particularly often found, doubtless because of 
the Vedic predilection for the number seven. It is probably needless to press 
the number for an exact identification, especially as it is quite probable the 
idea came with the Indians from Iran.? 


§5. The Earth 


The goddess Prthivi plays a singularly restricted part in the Rigveda 
except in so far as she is invoked along with Dyaus. She has but one short 
hymn of her own,* and a long and interesting hymn ascribed to her in the 
Atharvaveda ® is conspicuous rather for its accuracy of enumeration of the 
sights of the earth than for religious fervour. She is rich in heights, bears the 
burden of the mountains, and supports in the ground the forest trees. She is 
great, shining, and firm, and quickens the earth, by scattering rain from the 
cloud, a fact which shows that she is not rigidly confined to her element, 
doubtless because she has borrowed an attribute of Dyaus himself. The 
Brahmanas ” follow the Rigveda in referring her name as broad to the fact of 
her having been extended. In the funeral hymn § she is appealed to be tender 
to the dead as to a child, and she is called kindly mother earth. In the 
domestic ritual offerings to her as Bhimi are not rare.’ 


§6. The Sea 


All the available evidence points to the fact that the Vedic Indians had 
little accurate knowledge of the sea, and that none of the tribes were actually 
settled by the banks of the ocean, but at the same time the legend of the 
Acvins and their ships and of the saving of Bhujyu must be allowed, when 
taken in connexion with a few passages where the sea seems clearly a real sea, 


1 RV. vii. 96. Vol., pp. 93 ff. (Russian Turkestan). 
2 Op. cit. i. 380-2. 5 RV. v.84. Cf. L. Siitterlin, Archiv fiir Rel. 
3 Ved.-brahm. Periode, pp. 42, 43. Usener ix. 553; Dieterich, Mutter Erde (1905). 


(Gétternamen, p. 31) wrongly suggests ° xii. 1. 

that he is prior to Sarasvati. ITS Vis Lad sh bel sions 
4 See Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Index, ii. °® RV. x. 18.10. 

242. Cf. Tilak, Arctic Home, pp. 288 ff.; ° Cf. above, Chap. 8, § 1. 

N. G. Sardesai, Bhandarkar Comm. 


Chap. 10] The Sea 175 


and not the sea of the sky, to prove that the Indians had heard of the sea, and 
knew by hearsay, if not by experience, of undertakings directed towards 
obtaining wealth by sea commerce. But the conception of the sea as a deity, 
Samudra, is most rudimentary, whether we are to apply it to the ocean proper 
or merely to the lower course of the Indus, where it assumes a breadth which 
prevents the other bank being seen.1 He is invoked with Aja Ekapad, Ahi 
Budhnya, and Prthivi, and occurs once or twice in other enumerations, once 
with Sindhu: a personification of Arnava, who in one case occurs beside him, is 
still more feeble. The ritual agrees with the Rigveda: occasionally offerings 
are made as at the horse sacrifice to the god,” and even in the Grhya ritual * he 
is not unknown, as, for instance, at the Baliharana he is given an offering 
along with beings like Dhanvantari and Osadhi, ‘ the plant ’, but in the main 
these offerings occur in enumerations of many deities, and emphasize the 
unreal character of the god. The same rule applies in the later literature : 
the ocean is often poetically described,’ but a real god of the ocean seems not to 
have been created in India except under Mahommedan influences. In the 
Rigveda there is no hint that the realm of Varuna lies in any special con- 
nexion with the ocean, and it is not until the Brahmanas begin their specula- 
tions that the identity of the ocean and Varuna is asserted, but still at a time 
when Varuna is lord of all waters, and not those of the ocean merely. The 
same point is made clear by the ritual, for the only specifically sea offering 
which is made to Varuna is that of a nakra,® which may have been a crocodile, 
and which is given in the lists of victims at the Acvamedha, and it must 
be remembered that the aim of the compilers of the lists of victims was 
evidently not to trouble regarding real offerings, but to multiply as much as 
possible the number of victims to be offered, in theory not in fact. 
1 Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Indez, ii. 431, iv. 9. 1: 

432 ; Weber, Skizzen, p. 185; Hille-  * Kauc. Ixxiv. 6. 

brandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 15 ff. Contrast ‘4 Hopkins, AJP. xxi. 378 ff. 

A. C. Das, Rig-Vedic India, pp. 32 ff., * TS. v. 5.13.1; MS. iii. 14.2; VS. xxiv. 


44-6. yA, 
BOTS hive Gs 2c. Ver. L6s MS; v.19: 8s LA: 


CHAPTER 11 
THE MINOR GODS OF NATURE 
$l. The Rbhus and the Rtus 


Tue minor figures of the Vedic mythology are distinguished as a rule by 
the obscurity of their outlines : even when they are freely mentioned, as in the 
case of the Rbhus, it is a matter of the utmost difficulty to decide their precise 
character : it is probable indeed that in many cases the nature of the gods was 
little better understood by their worshippers than it is by us. Of this there is 
an excellent example in the Rbhus: they occur in eleven hymns in the 
Rigveda, being special favourites of the Bharadvaja family, and they are 
mentioned over a hundred times, but their mythical nature is very doubtful, 
and the Atharvaveda mentions them but eight times in seven hymns, and 
adds nothing to their character, indicating that in the popular side of the 
Vedic religion they had little hold. 

It appears that there are strictly three Rbhus, named Rbhuksan, ‘ lord ’ 
or ‘ chief of the Rbhus ’, which is also an epithet of Indra, Vaja, and Vibhvan. 
It was, however, natural that the number should be increased, and we hear 
of all the Rbhus, or Rbhu with the Rbhus, or Vibhvan with the Vibhus, and, 
it may be added, the Praisa for the god Indra at the evening pressing in one 
versionadds Prabhus. They are called Saudhanvanas, offspring of Sudhanvan, 
‘ the good archer ’, or sons of Indra, and by a play on Indra’s epithet, * son of 
strength ’, they appear as ‘ descendants of strength’. On the other hand 
they are also sons of Manu, and claim Agni as brother. They are bright 
deities, who ride on a car drawn by fat steeds ; they have metal helmets and 
fair necklaces. 

The essential features of the Rbhus is their connexion with Indra, through 
whom they are also connected with the Maruts and obtain a share of the Soma 
drink, which, however, in the ritual is whittled down to a share in an invoca- 
tion to Indra. With other gods they have but slight connexion such as the 
Mountains, Rivers, the Adityas, Savitr, and Tvastr. Their chief distinction 
is their skill, which wins them the favour of Indra and immortality, for they 
are distinctly regarded as men of the air, who earned for themselves immortality 
by their deeds, not as from the beginning divine. The Aitareya Brahmana ? 
states they obtained their position by means of austerities, a view which of 
course entirely agrees with the priestly estimate of the due means of securing 
divine rank, but which ignores the older and simpler conception of their skill 
as the adequate cause. Having attained that position, they are addressed as 

1 iii. 30. 2. 


Chap. 11] The Rbhus and the Rtus 177 


gods, and are besought to bestow boons on their worshippers, including the 
dexterity which is theirs specially : they also aid in battle. 

Five great feats of skill are enumerated as performed by the Rbhus, the 
making of a car which, horseless, reinless, with three wheels, travels space, for 
the Acvins ; the fashioning for Indra of two bay steeds ; the making out of 
a hide of a cow, seemingly for Brhaspati, to milk nectar, of which a variant 
seems to be the uniting of the mother with her calf; the rejuvenating of their 
ancient and frail parents, doubtless heaven and earth ; and, last but not least, 
the making of Tvastr’s one cup into four. This they did on the bidding of the 
gods through Agni, and the promise of immortality was the bait: Tvastr 
seems to have approved the proposal,! but in one place ” he is said to have been 
fain to slay them for this desecration of the cup of the gods, while they deny 
the desecration. Other feats are more commonplace: they fashion the 
sacrifice or the two worlds. 

Ina curious myth they are connected with Savitr. It seems that they went 
round the sky in swift flight, and came to the house of Savitr, who bestowed 
immortality upon them, when they came to Agohya. When after twelve days 
of slumber they had enjoyed Agohya’s hospitality, they made the fields to 
flourish and the streams to flow over the earth. They after a year looked 
around : they asked Agohya who had wakened them. When they slumbered 
in his house, they made grass on the heights and water in the depths.* 

An elaborate theory of their nature has been proposed by Hillebrandt.¢ 
He lays stress on the fact that, when they pleased the gods by their work, 
they became the artificers of the gods, Rbhuksan of Indra, Vibhvan of Varuna, 
and Vaja of the gods generally.» Now the four-month offerings are the 
Vaicvadeva, the Varunapraghasas, and the Sdkamedhas, and he puts the 
three Rbhus in contact with the three sets of offerings, and sees, therefore, in 
them the three seasons. Further, he holds that the twelve days’ slumber must 
refer to the period of twelve nights at the winter solstice known in German 
folklore and mythology : ® in this still period of the year when the sun is at 
a standstill, the geniuses of the seasons exert their creative power. In the 
ritual this is the Dvadacaha, ‘* the twelve day rite’, which is of the utmost 
importance for the ritual as it serves as a model for all Sattras, and it is in this 
rite that most of the Rbhu hymns are used. Moreover, he adds that at the end 
of the year the Rtus,’ ‘ the seasons ’, are offered to in the Grhya ritual of the 
Astakas, and also occur in the Crauta ritual. But all this is mere conjecture, 
as is the suggestion which has been made that the cup of Tvastr is the moon, 


1 RV. iv. 33. 5, 6. i. 110. 3 Agohya appears as Savitr; 
2 RV. i. 161. 4, 5. Thibaut, Indian Thought, i. 107. 
SEU V lV aGGe Ls 4s 1k aOv 2 sie Ole Lido. 5 RV. iv. 33. 9. 

* Ved. Myth. iii. 135-54; (KI. Ausg.), pp. ° This view is accepted by J. H. Moulton, 


144-8 ; cf. Ludwig, Rigveda, iv. 160 ; v. Essays and Studies presented to W. 
510. But see Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda,’ Ridgeway, p. 259, n. 1. 

pp. 239 ff.; ZDMG. lix. 262ff., who 7 RV.i.15; ii. 387; CCS. vii.8; ApCS. xii. 
refutes Hillebrandt’s view that in RV. 268 ff. ; GGS.iii.10; AQS.ii. 4, 12. 


12 [x.0.s. 31] 


178 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part IL 


the four parts being either replicas of the four months of each of the seasons, 
or four moon phases.!_ The attempt to bring the four-month offerings into 
conjunction with the Rbhus is a very forced one and is not supported by any- 
thing save the vague connexion of names, by which almost anything could be 
established ; the belief that the Indians and the Germans preserve a tradition 
of twelve days’ rest of nature at the winter solstice is a most improbable idea,” 
and the Dvadacaha obviously connects with the number of the months. 
Nor is it in the slightest degree intelligible how, if that were the case, the three 
seasons by sleeping then would procure grass and water in abundance. Nor 
is the assertion that the Rbhus are really the Rtus in the slightest degree 
plausible : the seasonal cups of the Soma sacrifice have no real relation to 
Rbhus at all. Finally he makes the ingenious suggestion that the contemned 
position of the Rbhus is due to the fact that these are the gods of a particular 
clan, who took to the work of chariot making, were not admitted for a long 
time to the Brahmanical circle, but eventually found admission through their 
skill in this useful art, a fact which may stand in relation to the name Rbhu, 
which he equates not with the German ‘ Elbe ’, but with the root arb seen in 
‘ Arbeit ’.2 The evidence for this theory consists simply in the fact that at 
the laying of the fire a Rathakrt according to some Sitras * should mention 
as his forefathers the Rbhus, and the name Saudhanvana is stated in late 
texts to denote a caste. The case is an interesting one, not because it makes 
the theory of Hillebrandt at all tenable, but because it shows how the Rathakrt, 
being a skilled chariot maker, was advised to claim as his forefathers the 
Rbhus, the chariot makers par ewcellence. 

Other theories are even less plausible : Weber * sees in them the geniuses of 
the past, present, and future, and in Agohya the sun who may not be concealed, 
i.e. driven from his course even by the winter solstice ; Bergaigne ® takes them 
as three ancient skilful sacrificers who attained immortality, and whose 
number three stands in connexion with the three fires. The evidence forbids 
any certainty or even probability : it is, however, most probable that they 
are identical with the German ‘ Elbe ’, and that they are elves of the air or the 
earth who have won their way to a divine greatness.?. By an extraordinary 
freak we find them in the Mahabharata elevated to the stature of the greatest 
of gods imaginable. 


* Macdonell, Ved. Myth., p. 138; Henry, Ind. Stud. xvii. 196. 
Journal des Savants, 1903, p. 496. 5 Ved. Beitr. 1894, p. 37. 

* Keith, JRAS. 1915, pp. 131-3. ° Rel. Véd. ii. 412. 

* On the etymology cf. Kluge, Etym. 7* Macdonell, op. cit., p. 134; Carnoy, Les 
Worterbuch der deutschen Sprache, s.v. Indo-Européens, p. 219. 
Alp. 8 ili. 261. 19 ff. 


“ Ap¢s. v.11..7; KS. iv. 9. 5.3; Weber, 


Chap. 11] The Gandharvas and the Apsarases 179 


§ 2. The Gandharvas and the Apsarases 


In the Rigveda the word Gandharva occurs twenty times, but only thrice 
in the plural, from which it is fair to deduce that the nature of the spirit was 
originally conceived as one. What is still more important is that it occurs 
but once in book ii—vii, and is found twice in the eighth book as a being hostile 
to Indra. The epithet vicvdvasu, ‘ possessing all good things ’, which accom- 
panies it, appears once in the Rigveda ! itself, and often later, to denote a 
definite individual. The Gandharva of that text is a high being of the air of 
the sky, a measurer of space who stands erect on the vault of heaven. He 
is brought into relation with the sun, the sun-bird, the sun-steed, and Soma 
likened to the sun. He is also connected with the rainbow in a late hymn.? 
He is, however, especially connected with Soma, whose place he guards, 
standing on the vault of heaven. Kreanu, the archer, who shoots at the eagle 
which steals the Soma, is expressly said in a later text ? to be a Gandharva. 
But the Gandharva is also connected with the waters: Soma in the waters 
is said to be the Gandharva of the waters: the parents of Yama and 
Yami are the Gandharva and the maiden of the waters: the Gandharva is 
the lover of the Apsaras. The Gandharva is further found in the marriage 
ceremony: the bride is claimed by him, and he is in the beginning of the 
marriage a rival of the husband.‘ Further the Gandharva has a fragrant 
garment,° and is wind-haired.® 

In the later Samhitds the account of the Gandharvas is fuller, but not 
essentially different : there is now a class which can be mentioned beside the 
gods, Fathers, and Asuras; they have a definite world of their own like the 
gods or the Fathers, to which a man may attain ;”_ the number is sometimes 
twenty-seven, which is the number of the Naksatras, or even 6333.8 Celestial 
traits are still numerous: ® his abode is in heaven, Rohini and the stars of the 
moon’s orbit are brought into connexion with the Gandharva ; he is mentioned 
with such deities as Agni, sun, moon, and wind, and in the post-Vedic litera- 
ture the Fata Morgana are connected with the Gandharva.’® But the Soma 
myth is especially developed. We learn that the Gandharvas kept Soma for 
the gods, but, allowing it to be stolen, were punished by exclusion from 
drinking it.1!_ Vievavasu has to be eluded by Soma in eagle form, a fact which 
no doubt explains the hostility of Indra to the Gandharva in the eighth book 


1 x. 85. 21, 22. xi. 5. 1. 17. Hence perhaps the Kali 
* RV. x. 123, a hymn however very differ- Gandharvas in JB. i. 154 f. 

ently interpreted ; Oldenberg, Rigueda- * AV. xi. 5. 2. 

Noten, ii. 342. ® BAU. iii. 6 places the Gandharva world 
RTA TOF tae Me bVeted os between the atmosphere and the sun, 
* RV. x. 85. 22. but ef. CB. xiv. 6.6.1. See also AV. ii. 2. 
BILE Vie xXte Leo a Cle Aly exits os: 1,2; xiv.2. 86; VS.ix..7 5 xviii. 38 ff. 
* RV. iii. 88: 6. 10 Epic Myth., p. 157. The alleged Iranian 
7 JB. i. 166; cf. 259 (yonder world, parallel is dubious ; E. H. Meyer, Indog. 

Gandharva-, Deva-, Svarga-loka) ; CB. Myth. i. 99 f. i MS. iii. 8. 10. 


12* 


180 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


of the Rigveda.! Soma is stated to have been stolen by Vi¢vavasu or at least 
to have lived among the Gandharvas, but the gods by the bribe of Vac, ‘speech’, 
were able to induce them to give him up,” the Gandharvas being fond of 
women, while Vac agreed to come back when her former owners called her, 
a fact which is an interesting parallel to the legend which makes the Soma 
seller lose the price paid to him for the Soma. The connexion with the waters 
appears in the mention of his abode with the Apsarases in the waters in the 
Atharvaveda.? That text also states that the Gandharva knows plants, 
doubtless the Soma, and that the odour of the earth arises to him, pro- 
bably an idea due to folk etymology with gandha, odour. 

In the Brahmana texts and in the ritual the connexion between the 
Apsarases and the Gandharvas is especially close: the Gandharva Urnayu 
sits among the Apsarases, who swing themselves, and is beloved by them : 4 
in a rite the priest can point to the young men and the young maidens present, 
when he means to indicate the Gandharvas and Apsarases.> They are 
besought to bestow progeny,® and in the Buddhist texts the being, which by 
the law of transmigration enters the womb at the time of conception, is called 
a Gandhabba.’ For the nights immediately after the marriage, when the 
newly wedded couple are not allowed to consummate the marriage, a staff 
which represents the Gandharva Vicvavasu is placed between them, and not 
until it is formally dismissed to the highest region is the marriage completed.® 
A different and lower view of the Gandharvas is also found in the Atharvaveda® 
where the plant goat’s horn is used to drive off the Gandharvas, who are 
regarded as shaggy with half animal forms, and are said to seek to ruin women 
in the guise of an ape, a dog, a hairy child, or a friend. 

In the Avesta there is a being, a Gandarewa, who dwells in the sea Vouru- 
kasa and is defeated by the heroic Keresaspa. He is also a lord of the bays, 
who dwells in the waters, and his identity with the Gandharva is clearly 
undeniable. The further comparison of Kentauros? is certainly untenable 
phonetically, unless it be assumed that both are loan words, and is open to the 
gravest objections on the grounds of the nature of the two conceptions : 
the few points of similarity cannot be traced in the Rigvedic conception at all. 

The nature of the Gandharva cannot well be expressly defined : there can 
be no doubt whatever that he is in his origin a creature of the heaven: the 
light side of his nature is obvious and persistent despite other traits. The 


1 viii. 77.53; 1.11. Carnoy (JAOS. xxxvi. contra, Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. i. 427; 


312) suggests contamination of an Indo- 
European storm myth and a Semitic 
monster of the abyss. 

STS. V1 AS OSs) Medio ae «cA lice 
CB. iii. 2. 4. 3-6. 

3 41.2.3; iv. 37. 12. 

SSP. xii. 10; 

° CB. xiii. 4. 3. 7, 8. 

¢ PB. xix. 8.2; cf. CGS.1019, 2. 

7 Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda*, p. 253, n. 1; 


Zur Bedeutung von Gandharva (1906) ; 
cf. Garbe, Samkhya-Philosophie’, p. 306. 

SURV Gx 85.0 aas 

® AV. iv. 87; ef. viii. 6.19. Their assimila- 
tion to Pi¢acas is seen in iv. 37. 8-10, 
and we find in Sainyutta Nikaya, i. 33, 
Picacas beside Apsarases as infesting a 
wood. 

0 Feist, Kultur der Indogermanen, p. 343, 
Hels 


Chap. 11] The Gandharvas and the Apsarases 181 


connexion with water can be traced to various sources: either the waters of 
the sky are the basis on which his activity has been transferred to the waters of 
earth, or his association with the Apsarases has led to his connexion with the 
waters, or as is quite possible the obscuration of his original nature has 
rendered it possible to associate him with elements not originally his own. It 
is more difficult to see how the demons of the Atharvaveda who are no better 
than Picgacas—indeed in a Buddhist text ! Pigdcas replace Gandharvas in con- 
junction with the Apsarases—can be developed from the Gandharva of the 
Rigveda. It is most probable that this is simply a case where demons have 
been allowed to obtain a name which is not theirs by right, the point of con- 
tact being found in the connexion of the Gandharva with marriage, which 
leads to the doubtless secondary connexion of the Gandharva with the 
embryo. The Gandharva, therefore, is not in the secondary period of the 
Vedic religion any longer a single concept : he is compounded of different and 
in essence disparate ideas. 

What the original nature of the Rigvedic Gandharva was, cannot, as has 
been said, be precisely elucidated : to Kuhn * he is a cloud spirit, to Wallis ? 
the rising sun, to Bergaigne * Soma, to Hopkins ° a genius of the moon, and 
to Roth * the rainbow. Toa different idea belongs the view taken by Mann- 
hardt,’ E. H. Meyer,® and von Schroeder,’ which sees in him a wind spirit 
developed out of the conception of the spirits of the dead as riding in the 
wind and passing therefore into wind spirits. Hillebrandt !° thinks that the 
real meaning of the name Gandharva is giant, and that the name is applied to 
different potencies, now and then to wind spirits, in other cases to the sun, 
since he finds that it is mentioned of Vicvavasu that he kept Soma hidden for 
three nights : as Soma is the moon in the view of Hillebrandt, this can refer 
only to the obscuration of the moon for three nights by the sun, and therefore 
of course the Gandharva must be the sun. This form of argument is by no 
means convincing, and, as against the theory of wind gods, it must be pointed 
out that only once in the Rigveda is there any possible mention of wind in 
connexion with the Gandharva, and from such an incidental idea no con- 
clusion can ever be drawn to the nature of a Vedic deity. 

Of the Apsaras in the Rigveda is mentioned her connexion with the 
Gandharva upon whom she smiles in the highest heaven. Vasistha also 
claims birth from an Apsaras, and the Vasisthas are said to have sat close to 
the Apsarases. The long-haired Muni, or ascetic with magic powers, moves 


1 Samyutta Nikaya, i. 33. ® Griech. Gétter, i. 71. Cf. Mysterium und 
2 Herabkunft des Feuers, p. 153. Mimus, pp. 57 ff.; Arbman (Rudra, 
3 Cosmology, pp. 34, 36. p. 309) argues that the Rigvedic con- 
4 Rel. Véd. iii. 64-7. ception is a priestly refinement, ignoring 
5 Rel. of India, p. 157. the much more plausible view of * con- 
6 Nirukta, p. 142, and cf. St. Petersburg Dict., tamination’ of deities. 

$.U. 10 Ved. Myth. i. 426-49 ; (KI. Ausg.), pp. 72 
7 Wald- und Feldkulte, i. 201. 101. 


8 Indog. Myth. i. 219 ff. 1 RV. vii. 33. 9. 


182 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


on the path of the Gandharvas and the Apsarases.1. The water nymph who is 
the spouse of the Gandharva is clearly the Apsaras. The connexion with 
water is brought out still more clearly in its most primitive form when the 
Apsarases of the sea are described as flowing to the Soma, a mythic description 
of the mixing of water with the Soma. The description of the Apsarases, 
therefore, agrees entirely and completely with the meaning of their name : ” 
they are ‘ the goers in the water ’, water nymphs, and already in the Rigveda 
they are not confined to the waters of the earth, though they were perhaps 
there first located. 

In the Atharvaveda and the Yajurveda the connexion of the Apsarases 
with the waters is frequently expressed: they abide in the waters, they are 
often asked to depart from men to the river and the bank of the waters, 
possibly a hint at the dangerous quality of the nymphs.*? The Apsarases who 
accompany the Gandharva Vi¢cvavasu are connected with clouds, lightning, 
and stars, and all the later Samhitas agree in calling them the wives of the 
Gandharvas. In the Catapatha Brahmana ! they appear as swimming about 
in a lake in the form of birds (az), and the later literature often treats them as 
water spirits, in forest lakes, in rivers, even in Varuna’s palace in the ocean. 
But they have also a further field of activity ; they dwell in the banyan and 
the fig-tree, according to the Atharvaveda,® where their cymbals and their 
lutes resound. The Gandharvas and Apsarases in these trees are begged to 
be propitious to a passing wedding party.® They are also said to be engaged 
in dance and song and play, but the Atharvaveda’ mentions some sinister 
characteristics : if they are fond of dice, and bestow good luck in gambling, 
they are also liable to cause madness, and magic has to be employed against 
them in this regard. The post-Vedic literature also finds them with the 
Gandharvas in trees, and adds mountains ° to their places of habitation. It 
is perhaps from them that the Gandharva attains his power of causing 
derangement or at least mental excitement, which is attested for the Brah- 
mana period by the phrase ‘ seized by a Gandharva ’, used of a lady who is 
inspired or demented.?® 

One Apsaras only is named in the Rigveda, the famous Urvaci. She was 
the mother of Vasistha,!° who claimed also descent from Mitra and Varuna, 
and she is invoked with the streams. But the chief reference to her is in a 


Pet Vo xe 50.0. * Holtzmann, ZDMG. xxxiii. 640 f. ; Hop- 
* Not as Wackernagel (Festschrift Kuhn, kins, Epic Myth., pp. 156, 160. 
pp. 159 f.), ‘ shameless’, or ‘formless’; * A Gandharva, in conjunction with an 
see Oldenberg, GGA. 1915, p. 131. Apsaras (appearing identical with a 
3’ Cf. Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkulte, ii. mortal woman), brings about the mad- 
36 ff. ness and death of the Brahman 
SENT Ost « Ate Yavakri ; see JB. ii. 269-72. 
* iv. 37.4; Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkulte, °° RV. vii. 33.11, 12. Possibly an idea due 
i. 99 f. to mystic visions at the Diksa; ef. 
* AV. xiv. 2.9; Kaug. Ixxvii. 7; TS. iii. Hauer, Die Anfinge der Yogapraxis im 
4. 8. 4. alten Indien, pp. 72 f. 


Nee Os os 


Chap. 11) The Gandharvas and the Apsarases 183 


hymn! of considerable interest and obscurity, in which she is loved by Puriira- 
vas. She is there connected with water, filling the atmosphere and traversing 
space. It is said that she spends four autumns among mortals, and she is 
invoked to return, but that request she refuses, promising, however, Puriravas 
that his offspring will worship the gods, and he himself will enjoy happiness 
in heaven. The hymn clearly refers to one of those alliances of nymphs 
and men, which are common in all literatures as in the stories of Thetis and of 
the German swan maidens, who often for as long as seven years are allowed to 
stay with mortal men. In the Catapatha Brahmana ? several interesting 
details are given, which, however, cannot be read into the Rigvedic account, 
and, therefore, may rest on later alteration and embellishment of the narative. 
Puriravas is united to Urvaci, but only on condition that she shall never see 
him naked: the Gandharvas envying their union, which subtracts her from 
their midst, devise a plan by which the sheep which Urvaci keeps with her is 
stolen away: Purtravas leaps from his couch to prevent the theft: he 
forgets to put on his garment, ‘ for he thought it long that he should do so,’ 
and he is revealed in a flash of light to the nymph who departs forthwith. 
Puriravas seeks desperately for her over the earth, until he comes upon her 
swimming in a lotus lake along with other Apsarases in the shape of aquatic 
birds. Urvaci reveals herself to him and consents to receive him on a night 
a year later, when the Gandharvas enable him to become one of themselves by 
producing the sacrificial firein a certain way. The tale has, of course, in any case 
been remodelled to suit the purpose of advocating the special mode proposed 
of producing the fire, but the episode of the taboo of seeing the hero naked is of 
interest and primitive in nature. It may be, as von Schroeder * suggests, an 
inversion of the same rule applied to the maiden, since the German legends of 
swan maidens lay always stress on the absolute necessity of the maiden not 
being seen in her true nature, but the transfer need not be certainly assumed. 
Puriravas is only once elsewhere mentioned in the Rigveda,’ where it is said 
that Agni caused the sky to thunder for the righteous Puriravas, though, as 
the name means ‘ he who calls aloud’, it is possible that in that passage the 
word is merely an epithet. In any case the view of Weber ° and Max Miiller ® 
that Puriravas is the sun and Urvaci the dawn is quite unnecessary, while 
Siecke’s 7 attempt to show that Urvaci is the moon is based on the same 
curious reasoning as all his efforts to fill the Rigveda with moon deities. 
Puriravas is simply a hero, not necessarily ever a real man, but conceived as 
one: later tradition derives the lunar race of kings from him. 

Other names of Apsarases are given in the later Samhitas : the Atharva- 


SRV. x. 95. 10, 17; 3 Griech. Golter, i. 53 ff. 
2 xi. 5.13; Geldner, Ved. Stud. i. 243-95 ; 451 S15 4 
Oldenberg’s notes. For a revised ver- ° Ind. Stud. i. 196. 
sion, Cantanu and Ganga, see MBh.i. ° Chips, iv.’ 109. 
3888 ff.; cf. Mannhardt, Wald- und 7 Die Liebesgeschichte des Himmels. 
Feldkulte, i. 69, 103 f., 152. 


184 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


veda ! mentions Ugrajit, Ugrampacya, and Rastrabhrt, and the Yajurveda * 
names among many others Menaka and Urvaci. The Catapatha Brahmana * 
mentions also a nymph, who is famous in later story, Cakuntala, as the 
mother of the king Bharata. 


§ 3. Spirits of the Forest, the Trees, and the Plants 


The references to the worship of the tree and the plants are very scanty in 
the Vedic ritual and mythology alike, but they are quite adequate to show that 
as among all other peoples these objects were not without their share of 
reverence.4. A long hymn in the last book of the Rigveda * is devoted to the 
deification of the plants with special reference to their healing properties, and 
plants also appear in the Atharvaveda,® where they are used in spells for 
healing, and for driving away demons of all kinds: the plant is even besought 
to bestow a horse, a sheep, a garment, and the life of the patient, who doubt- 
less was to be the instrument by which the prayer of the medicine man was to 
be made good if the spell succeeded in attaining its purpose. In the Rigveda ? 
Soma is already the king of the plants, and they are called mothers and god- 
desses : the Atharvaveda ® poetically describes a plant as a goddess born of the 
goddess earth. On the other hand plants have power to hinder child-birth, and 
in that case the offering of an animal victim to them is prescribed by the Tait- 
tirlya Samhita ° in order to procure their favour. 

The cult of trees, and above all of forest trees, Vanaspati, is recognized by 
the Rigveda,!° which in a few passages invokes either one or many along with 
the Waters and the Mountains. In the later Samhitas, as we have seen, 
trees are the favourite homes of the Apsarases and also of the Gandharvas. 
The Taittiriya Samhita 1 assigns to them as their homes the trees Acvattha, 
Nyagrodha, Udumbara, and Plaksa. When the wedding procession passes by 
large trees, these deities are to be besought to afford their favour. More 
directly, in the same ceremony, in some accounts the tree is solemnly honoured 
on the fifth day after marriage with gifts of flowers, of food and clothing, and 
the part of trees in the marriage ritual is one of the commonest features of 
Indian marriage among the less advanced tribes.12 There is, however, no 
trace in the Vedic literature of the marriage to a tree, which in modern India 
often precedes certain classes of marriages. Again, if a man is driving out on 


Vis LS laa. migrations. 
ASV SSX Vs) LO tt 5 x. 97; Roth, ZDMG. xxv. 645-8, 
® xiii. 5. 4. 138; ef. Holtzmann, ZDMG. ° Bloomfield, Atharvaveda, p. 67. 
xxxiii. 635 ff.; Leumann, xl. 80-82; 7 x. 97.18. 
v. Bradke, ibid. 498 ff. Sevin LOG. Le 
4 Meyer (Gesch. des Alt I. ii. p. 915) lays ° ii. 1. 5. 3. 
stress on the fact that Aryan religion ° vii. 34.23; x. 64. 8. 
pictures the deities as only faintly ™ TS. iii. 4. 8. 4. 
localized, and so, unlike other faiths, ™ Winternitz, Altind. Hochzeitsrituell, pp. 
could not develop any strong belief in 101, 102; BhGS.i. 18. Vicvavasu can 
tree worship. This may be explained by hardly be a relic of tree marriage. 


Chap.11] Spirits of the Forest, the Trees, and the Plants 185 


a new car, and he comes across a good tree, he should go round it from left to 
right, the way of the sun, and take from it branches with fruit. 

The belief in the life of the tree is very clearly seen in the treatment of the 
tree from which the sacrificial post is to be taken.? The necessary cutting is 
performed after a blade of grass has been put over the place where the blow is 
to be inflicted, and the blade is hidden to protect the tree, while the axe is 
expressly ordered to harm not the tree: the prescription is precisely the same 
as that adopted in the domestic ritual when the hair is cut, and in the ordinary 
cult when the victim is slain: the aim is clearly to avoid injury to the life 
in the tree by pretending that it is not being injured. The tree is also, when 
made into the form of a post, adorned with a band placed round it and is 
anointed, and this doubtless proves its living character, while it is possible 
that the verse in the Apri litany of the animal sacrifice, addressed to the forest 
tree, is really an adjuration to the sacrificial post. The evidence must not be 
unduly pressed, as in this case, owing to the presence of the god at the place 
of sacrifice, it is beyond doubt that the surroundings of the sacrifice are filled 
with his presence, and that, therefore, they may attain a sanctity not their own ; 
but the conception of the life of the tree is clear, even if its divinity is not so 
certain in this special instance. 

The belief in the presence of spirits in trees is, of course, ethnic and the 
Buddhist literature has many traces of it, showing the different sets of con- 
ceptions which are easily formed ; the tree is primarily the spirit, then the 
spirit with or without its children lives in the tree, and, if it perishes, has to go 
away to seek a new abode, while at a further stage the tree becomes more and 
more remotely connected with the deity. This literature is also instructive 
in the fact that it mentions other than tree spirits, spirits of terrible form and 
uncanny and hostile nature, who may well be of double origin, arising from 
a direct or animatistic conception of the darkness and hostility of the woods,* 
and also from the conception of unfriendly spirits which develops from the 
belief in the hostile spirits of the dead.t. The Rigveda ® preserves one hymn in 
its last book, describing the forest goddess, Aranyani, in a poetical and graphic 
manner which brings out clearly the uncanny sounds heard in the solitudes, the 
many beasts which abound, and the food which is raised without tillage. It is 
easy from this hymn alone to realize how spirits of dangerous character could, 
independently of any connexion with spirits of the dead, be deemed to abound 
in the forest. 

1 AGS. ii. 6. 9. kins, Epic Myth., pp. 40, 57. 
2 The ritual seems implied in RV. iii. 8. * Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda*, pp. 264 ff. 


* Cf. Wundt, Vélkerpsychologie, IV.i.462 ff.;  ° x. 146. 
cf. the evil spirits of the woods, Hop- 


186 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


$4. Spirits of Agriculture, Pasture, and the Mountains 


The deity of the field as Ksetrasya Pati, ‘ lord of the field ’, in the Rigveda? 
is invoked to grant cattle and horses, and with sweetness to fill heaven and 
earth, the plants, and the waters. In another hymn ” he is asked, along with 
Savitr, the Dawns, and Parjanya to bestow prosperity, and elsewhere it is 
said that worshippers are fain to have him as a neighbour. The full nature of 
the deity is made clear in the Grhya ritual,? which prescribes offerings to him 
when the field is ploughed, and he is, it is clear, no more than the deity believed 
to be in the ploughed land.* Similarly the Rigveda contains an invocation of 
Sita, the furrow, to grant rich blessings and crops.® The figure of this goddess 
naturally has more life in the Stittras,® which deal with the operations of agri- 
culture: she appears as the wife of Indra, which may be due to the fact that 
in the Rigveda ’ the god is once called Urvarapati, ‘ lord of the plough field,’ 
and her existence is manifested in the four Sondergétter, the deities Sita, 
Aca, Arada, and Anagha, who are to be worshipped at the furrow sacrifice, 
the threshing-floor sacrifice, the sowing of the crop, and the reaping and 
the putting the crop into the barn.® In another Sitra ® we have, beside 
the offering to Sita and to three other deities, Yajaé, Cama, and Bhiti, who 
are less concrete than is she, offerings to the guardians of the furrow on the 
four sides ; these guardians are called various names which are hardly more 
than epithets, ‘having good bows and quivers’, on the east, ‘ not winking the 
eyes’ and ‘ wearing armour’, on the south, ‘ prosperity ’, ‘ earth’, Parsni, 
Cunamkuri, on the west, and ‘ those that are terrible’ and ‘like Vayu in 
swiftness’, on the north.!° These figures are interesting: they cannot properly 
in any sense be classified with abstract deities, even if that class of deities can 
properly be set up: they are not personifications of human activities or 
feelings, but they are the deities involved in the operations of nature, Sonder- 
gotter, who live in the growth of the crop and may best perhaps be called 
animatistic spirits of vegetation, whose precise differentiation of character 
may plausibly be ascribed as in the case of the Roman Indigitamenta to the 
work of the priests. On the other hand Sita has always a more elevated 
character than the rest of such spirits: she is called Savitri in the Taittiriya 
Brahmana,!! and she becomes the heroine of the Ramayana, and the model 
of wifely truth and chastity, preserving none the less here and there traces 


DT Any & Pe PGS. ai, 17a 9. 

2 RV. vil. 35. 10. CaVIT ee. 

5 AGS. ii. 10.4; (GS. iv. 13.5; BhGS.ii. * GGS. iv. 4. 27. 
10. ® PGS. ii. 17. 13 ff. 

* Cf. Warde Fowler’s view (Religious Ea- °° Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 407. 
perience of the Roman People, pp. 77, ™ ii. 3.10.1. For the Ramayana see Jacobi, 
78) of the primitive nature of the Lar Das Ramayana, p. 130; Hopkins, Epic 
familiaris in Roman religion. Myth., pp. 78 f. 

5 RV. iv. 57. 6: 


Chap. 11] Spirits of Agriculture, Pasture, and the Mountains 187 


of her connexion with the furrow and the fruitful earth. Urvara, the plough 
field, is also a goddess in the Sitra literature, and is described as having a 
garland of threshing floors.1 It would of course be absurd to suppose that 
these scanty remnants of worship represent the whole of the agricultural side 
of Vedic religion, and as a matter of fact in the ritual there are abundant 
traces of other ceremonies having to do with agriculture, but the deities of the 
field were evidently as such not of great importance in Vedic religion, the care 
of the prosperity of men in these respects having been taken over by the 
great gods. When agricultural and vegetation spirits as such have great 
honour among and importance in the ideas of a people, then their figures are 
elevated to the rank of the great deities, as is the case with Attis, Adonis, 
or perhaps even Osiris in the lands of Asia Minor and of Egypt,? and the fact 
that other deities are the great gods of Vedic religion cannot be explained 
on any other hypothesis than that the specific religious instinct of the Vedic 
people chose these forms as the favourite objects of its devotions. Curiously 
enough, the later religion of India gives a picture of the differences of religious 
predilection : the young Krsna is represented as opposed to the worship of 
Indra by the pastoral world : * he prefers instead that they should worship the 
mountains, their cattle, and the woods, just as ploughmen worship the furrow. 
In cases like these it is impossible not to observe a definite cleavage of religious 
sentiment, which it is perfectly legitimate to apply as a principle to Vedic 
religion. The theory which seems sometimes to be held that the Vedic litera- 
ture does not really give us the popular religion of the time cannot be supported, 
when it is applied to the literature as a whole, including the Sitras of the 
domestic ritual, which are packed with popular ideas and magic practices of 
every kind. 

The mountains are according to the young Krsna essentially the deities of 
pastoral folk : the Rigveda,* which shows no trace of the old belief of moun- 
tains as the home of the gods generally,® also invokes here and there the 
mountains, nearly twenty times in the plural, and four times in the singular. 
They never, however, occur alone, but only with other deities such as Indra 
or Savitr, or with the waters, trees, plants, heaven and earth. They are 
described as rejoicing in the sacrificial offering and abiding securely. Parvata, 
‘the mountain ’, is once found invoked as a companion of Indra in the dual 
compound Indraparvata, and asked to come to the offering. In the ritual the 
mountains make but little appearance, but we hear in the Brahmanas ® a good 
deal of a salve from the mountain Trikakubh which has wonderful powers, 


aePGS.il. 17. 9. iii. 12.2.9; vi. 2.4.3; Visnu is lord of 


* Cf. Meyer, Gesch. des Alt.? I. ii. pp. 76, 
728 ff.; Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris ; 
Max Miller, Egypt. Myth., pp. 92 ff. 

3 Harivancea, ii. 16. 2 ff.; Visnu Purana, v. 
10. 29 ff. 

4 vi. 49. 14; vii. 34. 23, &c. For seven 
mountains, as doors of heaven, see TS. 


mountains, TS. iii. 4.5.1; Kaue. li. 8. 
5 Cf. Arbman, Rudra, pp. 40 ff., who seeks 
to find Rudra on Mijavant (cf. TS. i. 
8. 6). 
5 Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Index, i. 329 ; 
ii. 62. For the mountains in the epic 
see Hopkins, Epic Mythology, pp. 6 ff. 


188 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


and in the late Hiranyakeci Grhya Sitra! there occurs an obscure phrase, 
which suggests that it was thought in applying the salve to the eyes that the 
spirit of the mountain entered into the performer of the rite. The idea is of 
course perfectly in harmony with primitive ideas. 


§ 5. Deities of the House 


The deity of the house and the home is Vastospati, ‘lord of the dwelling’, 
who is invoked in one short hymn of the Rigveda ? to bless man and beast, to 
remove diseases, to make cattle and horses prosper, to afford protection, and 
to grant a favourable entry. He is elsewhere described as destroyer of diseases, 
is identified with Soma, brought into close connexion with Tvastr as an 
artificer, or again he is likened to Indra as a cuirass of Soma pressers. In the 
late tenth book he appears as an observer of ordinances, who was fashioned 
by the gods along with prayer. His character is made more clear by the fact 
that the Grhya Sitras * prescribe that offerings are to be made to him when 
a new house is entered. There is no possible ground for supposing that either 
Pisan,® or Rudra,® or Agni,’ or any other god is designated by the title, 
though Rudra actually bears the style in one passage.® The god is clearly 
the god of the house, who when a new house is built comes and abides in it. 
In the Sitras ° we hear more generally of deities of the house. 


§ 6. Divine Implements 


There is no very essential distinction between the worship of natural 
objects conceived as living and the worship of objects made by human hands, 
but it is obvious that the worship of such objects tends to be restricted in 
effect and importance. This is borne out by the evidence of Vedic religion 
where such religion is of very minor importance, despite the fact that it 
receives further attention in the Rigveda than might a priori have been 
expected. Thus we find there }° that two implements of the ploughman, (una 
and Sira, which may be the ploughshare and the plough, are invoked, and that 
in the Catapatha Brahmana a cake is assigned to them in the sacrifice. The 
warrior invokes his arrow as divine," and begs it to protect him and assail 
his foes: his armour, his bow and quiver, are also celebrated, and the drum 
is invoked to drive away the demons and the danger: in the Atharvaveda 
a whole hymn is devoted to its praises. But the priest naturally is more 


1 1.11.5; Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda', p.255, * AGS.i.2.4; MGS. ii. 12.6; PGS.ii.9.2; 


n. 3. Kauc. Ixxiv. 10; so in the epic, Hop- 
* vii. 54, 1-3. kins, Epic Myth., pp. 41, 57. 
SOE Vie cil antie 10 RV. iv. 57. 5-8: CB. ii. 6. 3.5; they are 
4 AGS. ii. 9.9; (GS. iii. 4; PGS. iii. 4. 7. taken as constellations by Hillebrandt, 
5 Perry, Drisler Memorial, p. 241. Ved. Myth. iii. 22144. 
6 Festgruss an Weber, p. 21. TORI Vie Viet oe Liao, LO wage Zoe 
7 Wallis, Cosmology, p. 22. aN a aU 
8 


TS. ili. 4. 10. 8. 


Chap. 11] Divine Implements 189 


prominent in the Rigveda, where not only the sacrificial post is deified, perhaps 
as a remnant of tree worship, is called divine, and is asked to allow the sacri- 
fice to go to the gods, but the sacrificial grass 1 and the divine doors * are 
celebrated. The pressing stones have three hymns ® given up to them: they 
are unaging, immortal, more powerful than the heaven itself. They are com- 
pared to steeds or bulls, their sound in the pressing reaches the sky. They 
bestow wealth and offspring, driving away the demons. The mortar and 
pestle * were deified also, and the Atharvaveda ® adds to the category various 
ladles and invents a great deity in the remnant of the sacrifice, the Ucchista. 

It is possible to draw a distinction between the cases of the deities of the 
plougher and the warrior, and those of the priest. In his case the presence of 
the deity at the sacrifice may be held to be the cause why the instruments 
of the sacrifice are treated with so much reverence, while in the former cases 
the reverence is not due to anything save the essentially valuable character of 
the objects, and the mystic powers which are deemed by man to lie within 
them. It is particularly easy to understand how the arrow or even the plough 
can be regarded as animate: the worship of the priestly implements would 
thus be rather more fetishistic in origin than real and direct worship of the 
implements for themselves, and this is perhaps the more accurate manner of 
considering the question.® 


§ 7. Divine Animals 


The place of animals in the Veda is restricted and of comparatively little 
importance so far as it concerns direct worship of animals, whether individuals 
or species, as distinct from the theriomorphism of gods who are not animal 
gods, and the use of animal fetishes. But the existence of these different ways, 
in which an animal may seem to be divine, renders it difficult in each case to 
say whether or not direct worship of animal is to be detected. 

Dadhikra or Dadhikravan is the most famous of horses in the Rigveda 
where he is praised in four rather late hymns.’ He was, it is clear, especially 
famous among the Pirus: his speed is extolled, he is compared to, and even 
directly identified with, the eagle. He is even described with epithets appro- 
priate to Agni as the swan dwelling in light, the Vasu in the air, the priest at 
the altar, the guest in the home.® He is a hero who wins booty, and who per- 
vades the five tribes with his might, as Sirya the waters with his light. He 
is a gift to the Pirus of Mitra and Varuna, and is invoked with Agni, with the 
Dawn, with the Acvins, Strya, and other gods, but in such invocations he has 
the first place. 


SRV. ii. 8.45 > x.70, 4: in the Bhitayajna and which figures in 
2 RV. i. 142. 6. the marriage ritual was the recipient of 
3 RV. x. 76, 94, 175. direct worship is conceivable (Arbman, 
« RV. i. 28. 5, 6; so the 2 carts, RV. x. 13. Rudra, p. 2038, n. 1), but not proved. 

ie: « Pay 7 iv. 388-40; vii. 44. 


® See Part II, Chap. 5, §2. Thatthemill- * iv. 40. 5. 
stone on which offerings are deposited 


190 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


The name appears to mean ‘ he who scatters the curd ’, and from the name 
and his general divine appearance Roth 1 holds that he is none other than the 
sun in the form of a swift steed. With this agrees the fact that the sun is 
constantly associated with Usas, that it is compared to or identified with a 
steed, and that it is said to be a bird. Bergaigne’s ? view that lightning is 
specially referred to may be supported by the swiftness ascribed to the steed, 
but it is not clear that the conception could possibly be explained, unless the 
sun were taken as meant. The alternative view of Ludwig, Pischel,* and 
Oldenberg > sees in the steed a real horse, a famous race-horse, which won its 
fame by its swift pace, but this is to exaggerate beyond all possible measure 
the value attached by the Vedic Indians to the sport of horse-racing. 

Hillebrandt,® therefore, suggests, with much more plausibility, that the 
steed is divine as being the horse which was to be sacrificed at the end of the 
period of a year, during which the sacrificial horse for the horse sacrifice of 
the king was allowed to wander at pleasure, guarded by the king’s sons and 
warriors, as a sign that his sovereignty was acknowledged on all sides. The 
suggestion is interesting and is correct, in so far as it is clear that the horse at 
the horse sacrifice was addressed in terms appropriate to divinity : it cannot 
seriously be doubted that for the time being the horse was considered as being 
in a sense divine, nor that in the offering the horse represented the embodi- 
ment of the sun. It is, therefore, probable that we have in the horse of the 
sacrifice a sun fetish,’ and this being so we have support for the theory that 
Dadhikravan is the sun in horse shape, but we need not suppose that Dadhi- 
kravan in the hymns in question was actually the horse of the horse sacrifice : 
he is instead the theriomorphic form of the sun, which in the horse sacrifice is 
represented by a real horse. 

The nature of Tarksya seems to be similar to that of Dadhikravan : he is 
described in part in the same terms, as pervading the five tribes with his power, 
and his character as a steed is shown by his bearing the name Aristanemi, 
‘ whose fellies are uninjured.’ From this epithet in the Yajurveda ® a new 
entity Aristanemi is created and invoked along with Tarksya. He is in later 
Vedic texts once or twice called a bird, and this may be compared with the 
bird character of Garuda, who is beyond question the sun bird. It is difficult, 
therefore, to doubt that Tarksya is merely a form of the sun, conceived as a 
bird or horse: hisnameis possibly derived from the prince Trksi Trasadasyava 


1 St. Petersburg Dict., s.v. E. Monseur, RHR. li. 16) are refuted by 
2 Rel. Véd. ii. 456, 457. van Gennep, L’état actuel du probleme 
3 Rigveda, iv. 79. totémique, pp. 291f. The ceremonial 
4 Ved. Stud. i. 124; cf. von Bradke, ZDMG. lying of the queen beside the dead horse 

xlvi. 447, is doubtless intended to secure her fer- 
° Rel. des Veda’, p. 69; SBE. xlvi. 282. tility through contact with the divine. 
5 Ved. Myth. iii. 401, 402; (KI. Ausg.), pp. §® VS.xv.19. Garuda appearsin TA. x. 1. 6, 

170 f. and in the Suparnadhyaya ; see Char- 
7 Totemistic suggestions (J. v. Negelein, pentier, Die Suparnasage, chap. v. 


Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie, 1901, p. 78 ; 


Chap. 11] Divine Animals 191 


who is mentioned in the Rigveda,! and naturally it has been suggested that he 
is a real horse deified.* 

Another horse is Paidva, who was given by the Acvins to Pedu, is white, 
praiseworthy, and is compared to Indra and Bhaga, and called slayer of the 
dragon, conqueror invincible.* All this will pass as a description of the sun 
horse. Even more certain is the sun nature of Etaca: in the plural the word 
denotes often the horses of the sun, and in the singular it denotes the sun 
horse who draws the sun: ina curious legend Indra is said to have aided Eta¢a 
in contest with the sun, perhaps by causing a wheel of the sun car to fall off : 
EKtaca picks it up and gives it to the sun, but now is able to take the lead of 
the sun, who finally, moved by the nobility of Etaca, concedes to him the 
front place in his chariot. It would probably be idle to see in this more than 
a mythological fancy, but the nature of Etaca is quite certain. 

In these cases, and in those which have been noted above, there is no trace 
of direct worship of the horse as such, whether as an individual of special 
qualities or as a species. Nor is any such worship of the bull to be found: as 
the sun and Agni are represented in the ritual by horse fetishes, so also in the 
ritual Indra and Rudra are represented rarely by bulls, and a bull plays an 
obscure part in the legend of Mudgala and his wife,? which has been inter- 
preted in the most diverse ways and which is clearly without value for mytho- 
logy : the bull is the theriomorphic form of Indra, Dyaus, and more rarely of 
other gods. The cow is often the theriomorphic form of the rain cloud or the 
beams of dawn: hence the many-coloured cows which yield all desires in 
heaven mentioned in the Atharvaveda,® and the post-Vedic Kamaduh, a wish- 
milking cow who dwells in the heaven of Indra. Ida and Aditi are also 
addressed as cows, and the gods are born of cows. But the actual worship of 
the cow as such is not found in the Rigveda: the most that can be said is that 
perhaps from her connexion with the Ida and Aditi the cow was becoming 
invested with sacred character: the term aghnyd, which is addressed to her, 
or used of her, sixteen times, denotes that she should not be killed, an idea 
which was not, however, the early idea. One great Vedic hero, Atithigva, has 
his name from his hospitable habit of slaying oxen or cows for guests; the 
tradition that beef was the proper food for guests prevailed throughout the 
Vedic age, and the eating of meat was never a general taboo, seeing that the 
great Vedic ritual authority Yajiiavalkya was credited with the dictum that 
he ate meat if it was in a certain condition, variously interpreted as coming 


VWI 2oeb he aiding the charioteer (= Aruna) of the 

* Foy, KZ. xxxiv. 366, 367. sun at the critical moment of the 

3 Bergaigne, Rel. Véd. ii. 51, 52. For a winter solstice : this is fanciful. 
possible Daurgaha, cf. Hillebrandt, °* RV.x. 102; cf. Bloomfield, ZDMG. xlviii. 
GGA. 1903, pp. 243 f. 541 ff.; Keith, JRAS. 1911, p. 1005. 

* Bergaigne, Rel. Véd.ii. 330-3 ; Oldenberg, ° AV.iv. 34.8. Cf. the Cabali offering of the 
Rel, des Veda’, p. 155; Geldner, Ved. domestic ritual ; PB. xxi. 1. 5; Hop- 
Stud.ii.161f. Hillebrandt (Ved. Myth. kins, Trans. Conn. Acad. xy. 27, n. 2; 


iii, 278-84) takes the myth as Indra Giintert, Weltkdnig, p. 368. 


192 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


from the shoulder, or firm.! The opposite doctrine of Ahinsa which forbade 
the taking of life, even animal, is however reflected in many passages such as 
the declaration that he who eats beef is born again in earth as a man of evil 
fame,” and the warnings of retribution in the next world which are offered to 
eaters of meat * in this. Moreover, in the Atharvaveda ‘4 we find the express 
assertion of the sacred character of the cow, which points to that animal 
having become in itself an object of worship. 

The goat is the animal which draws the car of Pusan, and it may be that 
in some cases Piisan was conceived in goat shape: it is also the name of the 
‘ one-footed goat ’, Aja Ekapad, which seems to be the lightning: here and 
there it is conceived as Agni. The ass draws the car of the Acvins. The boar 
is the theriomorphic form of the Maruts, Rudra, and Vrtra: in the Brah- 
manas it also occurs as the form assumed by Prajapati when he raises the 
earth from the waters,® which is the beginning of the boar incarnation of 
Visnu of the post-Vedic literature. The dog occurs in the two brindled dogs, 
Cabala, reminiscent of Kerberos, and Cyama of Yama, the god of the dead, 
who are called Sarameya, a name denoting descent from Sarama.* This 
indicates, though it does not conclusively prove, that Sarama, who figures as 
the messenger of Indra in the myth of the Panis, was treated as a dog, and this 
tradition, which is not expressly set out in the Rigveda, is the account of the 
later texts and of Yaska, who calls her the bitch of the gods. In all these cases 
there is clearly either theriomorphism, or the natural association of animals 
with the gods on the model of the relation of man and the animals. This last 
fact explains in all probability the figure of the male ape Vrsakapi who causes 
trouble between Indra and Indrani: ’ the effort to find some deity behind the 
ape is of doubtful validity, though it has naturally been thought possible to 
connect him with the monkey god Hanumant, who has been explained 
plausibly as a god of the monsoon, rather than as a case of direct zoolatry. 

The case of the tortoise is by no means so simple as that of most of the 
animals. In the piling of the fire altar in the ritual a tortoise is built into the 
altar, where it is left as lord of the waters to continue its existence ;® it is 
possible that here we have a trace of the reverence paid to the beast for itself, 
though it may be merely so treated as representing the waters. In the 
Catapatha Brahmana,® however, the tortoise is treated as the form assumed 
by Prajapati for creating all creatures, and this view is embodied by the later 
mythology in the tortoise incarnation of Visnu. The tortoise as Kacyapa 


1 Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Indez, ii. 145-7. kindly guardians of the dead ; Arbman 
42°C Boil. Laas 2he (Rudra, p. 260) as destroyers of the dead. 
$ KB. xii. 3. 7 RV. x. 86. Hillebrandt (Ved. Myth. iii. 
ADIL tae) CLE Viet Vilool OL kos Los 278, n. 2) sees in him a constellation 
5 Macdonell, JRAS. xxvii. 178-89. marking the beginning of the pressing of 
AOR V, OX. 24.0 ey DSKA. NIT, ext the Soma each year; Giintert (Weli- 
Bloomfield (JAOS. xv. 163-72) makes kénig, p. 310), a vegetation spirit. 


themsunandmoon. Carnoy(Les Indo- * Weber, Ind. Stud. xiii. 250. 
Européens, pp. 194, 226) treatsthemas ° vii. 4.3.5; 5.1.1. 


Chap. 11] Divine Animals 193 


appears also beside Prajapati in the Atharvaveda,! and in the Aitareya 
Brahmana ? it is said that Vigvakarman promised the earth to Kagyapa. In 
these cases there is merely theriomorphism. Theriomorphism is also found 
in the case of demons, who are not seldom called mrga, ‘ wild beast’, and 
specific enemies are called Aurnavabha, ‘ spider brood ’, and Urana, ‘ ram ’. 
By far the most frequent case, however, is that of Vrtra, who is called the 
serpent repeatedly : we find also Ahi, * serpent’, not merely identified with 
Vrtra, but occasionally alone, when he is described exactly as Vrtra is 
described, as encompassing or swallowing the waters, and defeated by Indra. 
From this conception arises that of several Ahis of whom he is the chief.? The 
term is also applied to Agni, and one god, Ahi Budhnya, has no other name. 

Among the birds also theriomorphism is the normal explanation of their 
mention. The sun is essentially a bird, and is twice in the Rigveda * called 
Garutmant, whence arises the sun bird Garuda of the latest Vedic period. The 
eagle is connected with Indra, and Indra seems, like Verethraghna in the 
Avesta and Odin in Germanic mythology, to have assumed an eagle shape : 
Agni is also an eagle, and Soma is often called a bird. 

There are, however, some traces of real reverence of animals, more certain 
than that of the tortoise, and more direct in origin than that of the cow whose 
divinity is really on the growth in the Vedic period. Thus in the case of birds 
the Rigveda ® twice invokes a bird of omen to give auspicious signs: it 
relegates, however, the owl and the pigeon to the rank of the messengers of 
Yama, but it is reasonable in this case to suggest more direct reverence of 
a sort at an early period. It must, however, be admitted that this cannot be 
proved : even in the later literature ® the owl is styled the messenger of the 
evil spirits, and the beast of prey, covered with blood, and the vulture, which 
preys on the dead, are called the messengers of Yama, or of Yama and Bhava. 
A bird king is Tarksya Vaipacyata according to the Catapatha Brahmana.’ 

Direct worship is clear in the homage paid to the snakes at the beginning 
and the end of the rains when they are specially dangerous.’ Of this there is 
no trace whatever in the Rigveda: the only deity, as opposed to demon, is 
Ahi Budhnya and that his snake character was real, and not mere therio- 
morphism, is not suggested by anything we know of that deity. The demon 
Vrtra was not a snake, but a natural phenomenon in origin, and the Rigveda 
does not propitiate him. But in the later Samhitas we do find the apotropaeic 
worship of the snakes set on a level with that of such beings as the Gandh- 
arvas. They are stated to be in earth, air, and heaven, and in one hymn of 
the Atharvaveda,°® which knows snake deities well, some individual snakes may 


eeXINs Os 10s 7 xiil. 4. 3. 9. 
* viii. 21. 10. 8 Winternitz, Der Sarpabali (Vienna, 1888). 
SOR V.1x. SS. 4'sux. 189565) clainoc. 14, Cf. Arbman, Rudra, pp. 77 ff.; Hopkins, 
* Hopkins, Rel. of India, p.45. For parallels Trans. Conn. Acad. xv. 30, n. 1. 
cf. von Schroeder, Arische Religion, ii. * xi. 9; Bloomfield, SBE. xlii. 631-4, 
chee 5 ji. 42, 43. Such worship in Greece is often only 
° HGS. i. 16.19 ff.; Kaug. 129; TA. iv. 28. theriomorphic ; Farnell, Greece and 


13 [u.0.s. 31] 


194 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


be referred to. In the Sttras offerings are prescribed for the snakes of the 
three regions,! they are washed, combed, presented with collyrium, ointment 
and garlands, and duly fed ;? they receive offerings along with gods, plants, 
and demons, and blood is poured out for them,? a fact which brings them into 
conjunction with Rudra. It is only reasonable to recognize in this direct 
worship of the terrible snake, which is thus propitiated and honoured in 
the hope that it will stay away from the houses of those who show it respect. 
The feeling is common in modern India, and is a good case of a propitiation due 
to terror and awe rather than to loving admiration. It is possible that the 
mention of snakes of the air and the sky may have been aided by the concep- 
tion of the snake Vrtra, but it may be due merely to the formalism of the ritual, 
and the constant tendency to spread every power over the three parts of the 
universe. Several names of great snakes are known to us, e. g. Taksaka, and 
Arbuda Kadraveya is at once a snake-priest and a snake-king. 

While the snakes are the most lasting and prominent instance of a worship 
intended in the main to avert danger, it is of course possible that the common 
ideas that the earth spirit takes the form of a snake, and that the soul of an 
ancestor lives on in a snake which is about the house, had something to do 
with the sacred character and kindly treatment of the snakes. There are other 
instances of a temporary propitiation of animals, which might else be harmful : 
thus the Kaugika Sitra ‘ tells of the making of offerings to ants, the white in 
the east, the black in the south, and so on: the ants ° are regarded, as we have 
seen, as important beasts in that they can find water everywhere, and in the 
myth they play the part of the means of depriving Visnu as the sacrifice of his 
head. If there are worms in a cow, an offering is made to worms,® and similarly 
an offering may in a case of need be made to the king of the moles.” These acts 
indeed are not precisely of the greatest importance: they merely amount to 
the recognition of the power of the animals to injure, and the desirability of 
making them a present to appease their will to work injury: the precise 
parallel is the practice in Greece ® of offering something to the flies to deter 
them from infesting the sacrifice. The case of the frogs, who seem in one hymn 
of the Rigveda ® to be treated as having power to send prosperity through 
the rain which marks their awakening from their slumber in the mud, is 
obscure. The frog often serves in the ritual as a representative of the cooling 
water, and therefore this case might be reduced to theriomorphism, but that 
is less likely. 


Babylon, pp. 78,79. See also PB. iv. 9. to earth, VS. xxiv. 26; it is Rudra’s 
6.5 xxv. 45.0 Ts CH iio 52.547 4, beast, ApCS. viii. 17. 1; Hillebrandt, 
GOOF LT sexi tes Oise eaves Ved. Myth. ii. 187, n. 1, 200, n. 1. 
1 AGS.ii. 1.9; PGS. ii. 14.9; BhGS.ii.1.  * Farnell, Greece and Babylon, p. 78. 
2 AGS. iii. 4.1; CGS.iv. 9.38; 15.4. ®* RV. vii. 103; Bloomfield, JAOS. xvi. 
3. AGS. iv. 8. 27. 173-9 ; Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, p. 68. 
4 116; Weber, Omina und Portenta, p. 382. Contra, Max Miiller, Sansk. Lit. pp. 494, 
5, Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 277, 337. 495 ; Deussen, Gesch. der Phil. I. i. 101, 
STA. ive 36: 102. 


7 GGS. iv. 4.31. The mole is itself offered 


Chap. 11] Divine Animals 195 


It should be added that in the list of sacrifices given in the Yajurveda ! we 
find some animal offerings to such entities as the bull-king and the tiger-king : 
these would be worth consideration onlyif it were possible to take seriously all 
the lists of offerings prescribed in these cases : considerations of common sense 
enable us to relegate many of them to the realms of priestly fancy. 


§ 8. Totemism 


The nature and meaning of totemism are so uncertain and ill defined that 
it would be necessary to examine the concept in detail, if it were not for the 
fact that, on any theory of totemism which does not reduce it to the worship 
of animals, there is no support for the view that that phenomenon is to 
be found in Vedic religion. The essential feature of a totemist community as 
conceived by S. Reinach,? who is now its most consistent supporter, assumes 
that the men and women of that community conceive themselves severally 
to be related to some animal or plant or other thing,® and that they normally 
treat that plant or animal with great care and respect, only on special 
occasions in the case of an animal or plant destroying it in the course of a 
formal meal, in which they enter into communion among themselves and with 
the god, through devouring the representative of the god: the species and not 
the mere animal being sacred, as soon as one animal is killed, another takes 
its place. To this conception of totemism the most value is attributed by 
Reinach because of his view that the domestication of animals and plants came 
about through this belief, which he traces to a hypertrophy of the same social 
instinct which allowed of the growth of human society by forbidding killing 
within the family and the clan. He does not regard it as primitive in totemism 
that the members of the totem group should regard the totem as an ancestor : 
this is in his view the sort of wrong explanation which is inevitably given by 
savages when asked to explain uses of which they do not know the real 
origin. 

This theory of totemism in itself is open to the gravest doubts,’ but it is 
unnecessary to discuss it or the alternative views that totemism is derived 
from ancestor worship and metempsychosis,® or is economic au fond,® or 


SL SaLVaroseles Aligerm. Rel. i. 157-63; for the Celts, 
2 Cultes, Mythes et Religions, i. 9-29; S. Czarnowski, Le culte des héros et ses 
41 ff.; ii. 112,113; iv. p. iii (review of conditions sociales (1919), pp. 331 ff. 
E. Durkheim, Les formes élémentaires de * Van Gennep (op. cit., p. 343) accepts this 
la vie religieuse, Paris, 1912). The sug- fact as vital, but not the rest. 
gestion of Frazer (Golden Bough’, iv. ‘* Cf. Keith, JRAS. 1916, pp. 542 ff. 
104 ff.) that the form of Vrtramaycon- ° Wundt, Elemente der Vélkerpsychologie, 


ceal totemism as well as a nature myth 
may be passed over without comment. 
Cf. his Totemism,iv.13; Warde Fowler, 
Religious Experience of the Roman People, 
pp. 25-7; A. van Gennep, L’état actuel 
du probleme totémique ; Hopkins, JAOS. 
xxxviii. 154-69. For Germany cf. R.M. 
Meyer, Aligerm. Rel., p. 486; Helm, 
phe 


pp. 178 ff. Cf. Wilken, De verspreide 
Geschriften, iii. 85 ff.; iv. 109 ff.; E. B. 
Tylor, JAI. xxviii. 138 ff. 


Hopkins, loc. cit. Cf. Frazer’s second 


theory and that of Haddon. Van Gennep 
(op. cit., pp. 339 ff.) argues for a classi- 
ficatory theory, ‘ parentiste et territo- 
rialiste.’ 


196 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


originates from the desire of the savage, at the time of puberty in connexion 
with the new birth which he then undergoes, to provide himself with a safe 
resting place 1 for the external soul, or from his ignorance of the true nature of 
conception, which is Sir J. Frazer’s latest opinion on this subject. In the 
Vedic religion there is not a single case in which we can trace any totem clan 
which eats sacramentally the totem animal or plant, and, therefore, the 
most essential feature of totemism on Reinach’s theory does not even begin to 
appear in the Veda. The only point on which there is anything to be gleaned 
from the Vedic literature is the question of descent from animals, or plants. 
The evidence is the following: the Rigveda * mentions among the tribes the 
names of the Matsyas, ‘fishes ’, Ajas, ‘ goats ’, Cigrus, * horse radishes’, and the 
names of Vedic families include Gotamas, which includes the base go, * cow ’, 
Vatsas, ‘ calves’, Cunakas, ‘dogs’, Kaucikas, ‘ owls’, and Manditkeyas, 
‘descendants of Mandika (frog) ’. The family of Kacyapas bear the name 
tortoise, which as we have seen is occasionally a name of Prajapati, or even 
an independent semi-divineanimal. In a passage of the Catapatha Brahmana? 
where Prajapati appears as a tortoise, the remark is made that people say 
that all beings are the children of the tortoise. The last statement is so 
obviously due to the fact that Prajapati is the father of all beings, and that 
if he is also a tortoise, the tortoise is obviously the father of all beings too, 
that it cannot be considered seriously at all. Of the other cases, it is sufficient 
to remark that in not a single one of them have we even the hint of a tradition 
that the families claimed their origin from the animals mentioned : it is most 
probable that some of them may be nicknames given by their too candid 
friends, other again for causes which we cannot know, such as the prevalence 
of the thing mentioned (e. g. fish or horse radishes in the land) and so on.4 
Oldenberg ° adduces some later evidence which is in itself irrelevant for the 
Vedic age, since he admits that in the case of the best instance of all, the 
rinces of Chota Nagpur who claim descent from a snake, the belief is pro- 
bably aboriginal. But what is adduced from the epic is of no value : the name 
Iksvaku, which is known in the Veda, of the line of princes is in sense sugar 
cane; Rksa, father of Samvarana, a name found in the Rigveda,® means 
bear, and Sagara’s wife brought forth a cucumber in which were 60,000 sons. 
The value of such evidence is obviously minimal.’ Moreover, it must be 
remembered that such legends need have nothing whatever to do with 
totemiism at all, but may simply belong to the very old idea which draws no 


? Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 52ff.;  ° Rel. des Veda’, pp. 82 ff. (modified from 


Belief in Immortality, i. 95. ed. 1 in view of Keith, JRAS. 1907, 
? vii. 18. 6, 19. pp. 929 ff. ; Taittiriya Samhita, p. cxxi). 
8 vil. 5.1.5. Asaseer Kacyapaisfoundin ° v. 53. 10. 

RV. ix. 114. 2; ef. AB. vii. 27. 7 The same remark applies to Hopkins’ 
* Hopkins, JAOS. 1894, p. cliv. The fish suggestions (Epic Myth., p. 24) that the 

people of King Matsya Sammada in CB. Pancalas may mean ‘ five snake clans 

xili. 4, 3. 12, are of course merely ficti- (dla, cf. eel) >and the Kurus and Krivis 


tious as the context shows. are Naga names. 


Chap. 11] Totemism 197 


persistent or accurate distinction between men on the one hand, and animals 
on the other. Of such ideas there are remains not merely in the theriomor- 
phism of the gods, which is undeniable and clear, but also in such fictions as 
that of the genus man-tiger which is found from the Yajurveda ! onwards, 
and which in post-epic religion has its classical example in the man-lion in- 
carnation of Visnu, but also in the Nagas, who are first so called in the 
Sitras,? and who according to the later tradition were human beings in 
appearance but really serpents. This view is widely spread in later India and 
results in the solemn question being put to initiates into the Buddhist com- 
munity whether they were men or Nagas, the latter kind of being being 
excluded from the privilege of becoming a member of the Sangha. 

Oldenberg * has suggested that the existence of taboos in some cases may 
be due to totemism, and has instanced the wearing of an antelope skin by the 
Brahman pupil as sign of possibly the wearing of the skin of the divine animal. 
It is proper to note these cases, but in none recorded in the Vedic ritual 
is there any trace of the conditions necessary to lend even a possibility of 
totemism, namely the existence of the totem community which observes the 
taboo, or the connexion of the animals whose skin is worn with the wearer. 
That the skin may have been worn in certain cases for magic purposes is 
perfectly possible without any element of totemism being visible or existing. 

Nor again is it possible to lay any stress on the argument that the occa- 
sional offering of food to animals in place of the sacrifice of animals points to 
totemism: the best known instances are the offerings made at the spit-ox 
ceremony to a bull, a cow, and a calf in place of Rudra, his consort, and 
Jayanta respectively instead of slaughtering an ox, and the similar rite at the 
Astakas.4 With these usages may be compared the legends, which seem to 
show that in the worship of the wolf-god Apollo at Sikyon an offering was 
made to wolves, regarded as in some degree the temporary incarnations of the 
god.® But not much stress can be laid on the Indian cases, as they are recorded 
merely in Sitras, which show the influence of the desire to avoid animal 
offerings, partly no doubt for economy, partly perhaps on humanitarian 
grounds.® 


$9. The Lesser Nature Goddesses 


Not one of the goddesses of the Rigveda, with the doubtful exception of 
the Dawn, can be said to be of any real importance. Sarasvati and Prthivi 
have already been mentioned: in the Siitras Bhimi also appears, but with 
little character of any kind, doubtless as a direct expression for the earth 
1 VS. xxx. 8; CB. xiii. 2.4.2. Suchideas * Rel. des Veda’, p. 83. 

are commonin Babylonian religion. Cf. ‘ Below, Part III, Chap. 21, § 2. 


werwolves, Carnoy, Les Indo-Européens, ° Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, iv. 115. 
p. 226. These have been seen inthe ° Cf. Keith, JRAS. 1907, pp. 933, 934. The 


Salavrkas of RV. x. 95. 15; Brunn- cases may be instances of a vegetation 
hofer, Arische Urzeit, p. 284. spirit in animal form, but the evidence 
2 AGS. iii. 4. 1; Hopkins, Epic Myth., pp. is wholly inadequate for any theory to 


28 ff. be established. 


198 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


goddess. The Rigveda? also celebrates Ratri, ‘ night’, as the sister of the 
Dawn, and the daughter of heaven. But night is here conceived as the bright 
starlit night, which fills the valleys and the hills and drives away the darkness, 
keeping away the wolf and the thief. Night is also a few times invoked 
together with the dawn as joint goddesses, and their importance such as it 
is seems derived from her connexion with that goddess. 

Another goddess who is clearly connected with nature is Preni, the mother 
of the Maruts, who is doubtless the storm cloud :? the word is properly an 
adjective ‘ speckled ’, used of the bull, or the cow, and in the plural of the 
cows, which milk Soma for Indra. More interesting is the figure of Saranyt * 
who occurs in a curious legend in the Rigveda, in which it is narrated that 
Tvastr made a wedding for his daughter, that at the news all the world came 
together, that during the wedding Saranyt disappeared, but not it seems until 
she had been married to Vivasvant, that the gods hid the immortal from 
mortals, and making one of like form they gave her to Vivasvant : it is added 
that Saranyii bore the two Acvins when this happened and left two pairs 
behind her. Yaska tells us that she first bore the pair Yama and Yami, and 
then changed her form to that of a mare and ran away: Vivasvant in the 
form of a horse pursued, and then were born the Agvins, while on the female 
of like form was born Manu Savarni. The tale is a strange one, and may be 
compared with the legend of the Tilphossian Erinys,* who bore in horse form 
the steed Areion ; the two myths probably belong to the same order of ideas, 
but it is difficult to say what the origin of the conception should be taken to 
have been. The horse form of Saranyii does not occur in the Rigveda: it can 
only be inferred and we do not know from what source Yaska obtained the 
details of the legend: it may have been an old tradition or merely a specula- 
tion: moreover the idea may have been caused by nothing more than the 
conception of the Acvins who may have been thought to have been in horse 
form, and not merely lords of horses, in which case the comparison with the 
Erinys must probably be given up. On the other hand, especially if the com- 
parison is held to be valid, the figure of Saranyii may be brought into connexion 
with the Dawn, or the sun-maiden, whose swift nature her name would then be 
a good expression, since it is essentially derived from the root, sr, ‘run’. 
The verbal correspondence with Erinys cannot however be accepted as proved, 
as it is clearly contrary to the phonology. Such a view, which is defended by 
Bloomfield, is more plausible than the suggestion which connects Saranyi 
with the storm, and which, accepting the identity with Erinys, seeks to trace 
the character of the Erinyes to this conception. S. Reinach ® again has traced 


BR Viel Xe) Lhe * Roth, Nir., p. 145. and Erinys as loan words from another 
* x. 17.2; Bloomfield, JAOS. xv. 172-88 ; tongue. The conjecture is possible that 
Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. i. 503 (Yama’s the term Erinys did not originally belong 
mother=night, Saranyi= dawn). to the horse goddess at all, but that she 
* Lang, Modern Mythology, pp. 65 ff. Feist bore a name really corresponding to 
(Kultur der Indogermanen, p. 343, n. 1) Saranyi, but later confused with Erinys. 


suggests connexion between Saranyii ° Cultes, Mythes et Religions, iv. 54-68. 


Chap. 11] The Lesser Nature Goddesses 199 


in Europe an old horse goddess (originally totemistic), found in Arcadia, in the 
legend of Cloelia, and as Epona in Gaul. 

There is another group of goddesses of whom it can safely be said that in 
the later Samhitas they are the deities of natural objects, though the Rigveda 
leaves their character wholly uncertain and unexplained. These are Raka, 
who twice appears in the Rigveda! as a rich and bountiful goddess, with 
which her name, probably containing the root rd, ‘ give’, accords; and 
Sinivali, described as a sister of the gods, with broad hips, fair arms and fingers, 
who is begged to give children. She is invoked with Raka, Sarasvati, and with 
Gungi, who only occurs in this place. These later Samhitas, however, have a 
scheme under which Raka is the full moon day, Anumati the day before full 
moon, Kuhii new moon, and Sinivali the day before new moon. Siniva4li is also 
said by the Atharvaveda ’ to be the wife of Visnu. While it is true that the 
explanations are not given in the Rigveda and that, in the case of Anumati, 
the position given seems to be secondary, it is difficult to be certain as to the 
others, with whom may be connected the otherwise unknown Gungi.* 

Possibly another deity who plays some part in the development of Vedic 
thought may be traced to a natural origin, namely Vac, ‘speech’. In the 
Rigveda ® she has a hymn in which she describes herself as accompanying all 
the gods, and supporting Mitra and Varuna, Indra and Agni, and the Acvins, 
and as bending the bow of Rudra against the unbeliever: she claims to have 
a place in the waters, in the sea, and to encompass all beings, while in another 
hymn she is styled the queen of the gods. In the Brahmanas ° she is specially 
famed in the legend of the purchase of the Soma from the Gandharvas by 
means of a woman, Vac taking that form to tempt the Gandharvas, as lovers 
of the sex, to surrender the Soma which they guard: she agrees,’ however, 
with the gods, before the transaction takes place, to return to them and does so 
when called upon. The goddess seems to have too much life and reality in the 
Rigveda to be a mere abstraction, and it is important perhaps that in the 
Naighantuka § she is ranked among the gods of the atmosphere. Therefore it 
is possible that thunder, which in the Nirukta appears as the Vac of the middle 
region, may be the starting-point of the goddess who naturally develops in 
connexion with human speech. 

It is also possible that in Uma, who appears at the very end of the Vedic 
period proper ® as the wife of Rudra, we have a goddess of the mountain, as she 


See also Farnell, Cults of the Greek 7% AB. 27. She also figures in the strife of 


States, iii. 50 ff. Cf. E. Monseur, RHR. Adityas and Afngirases, assuming the 

holt. shape of a mare or lioness, JB. iii. 
AI. 82.7 ¢0v. 42. 12. 187 f.; AB. vi. 34 f.,. &c. 
211. 82 5 x. 184. 8 v.5; Nir. xi. 27. From a very different 
3 viii. 46. 3; ZDMG. ix. p. lviii. root has sprung the Babylonian doc- 
4 Cf. Weber, Ind. Stud. v. 228 ff. ; Hopkins, trine of the word ; Farnell, Greece and 

Epic Myth., p. 70. Babylon, pp. 176-9. Cf. below, Chap. 29. 
LS Se UPPER (a itve.<)y APE * Kena Up. iii. 12. Cf. Oppert, Orig. Inhab. 
* TS. vi. 1.6.55 MS. 1i1..7..85. CB. iii. 2.4. of India, p. 421 (Uma = Amma) ; Hop- 


3-6. kins, Epic Myth., pp. 224 ff. 


200 The Gods and Demons of the Veda (Part II 


is given the epithet Haimavati, and is recognized in the later mythology as the 
daughter of the mountain Himavant. On the other hand it must be re- 
membered that, as Rudra is essentially a god of the mountains in the Vedic 
texts, it was only natural that his wife should be made out to be from the 
mountains, and that, therefore, we may have to do here simply with the same 
principle of setting a female beside the god which gives us Indrani, and 
the other wives of the gods, though it is tempting to see in Uma a form of the 
mother goddess of the Dravidians. 

A goddess who owes her nature to the actual sacrificial food is Ida,1 the 
offering of milk and butter which occurs several times in the Rigveda, and 
more often later. Like Aditi and more naturally, she is brought into connexion 
with the cow, and a cow is used in the ritual to represent her and Aditi, and 
addressed with her name. She bears the names butter-handed and butter- 
footed, which express clearly her nature, and she normally appears with the 
goddesses Sarasvati and Bharati. Agni is said to be her son, because of his 
birth from the place of the Ida, and a mortal man Puriravas is called Aila,* 
which seems to denote him as an offshoot fromIda. She is also connected in the 
Rigveda with Urvaci,® with Dadhikravan, and with the Acvins. She figures in 
the legend of Manu, who after the flood through her generated the human 
race, [da being called his daughter.* She is styled also the daughter of Mitra 
and Varuna.® Bharati, who occurs with Ida, is clearly the offering (hotrd) of 
the Bharatas, a fact which accords with the importance of the Bharatas in 
eult.6 Ida, Sarasvati, and Bharati are called in the Yajurveda the wives of 
Indra,’ and in the Rigveda a goddess Brhaddiva, ‘ of the broad sky ’, is 
mentioned with Ida, Sarasvati, and Raka, but of her nature nothing more is 
known.® 


$10. Constellations and Time Periods 


There is a certain curious paucity of evidence of worship of constellations 
other than the sun and the moon, especially in its connexion with Soma,° and 
the planets seem to have attracted little notice. Whether we believe or not 
that they were known to the Vedic Indians, at any rate it is obvious that they 
received no direct worship in the period of the Rigveda, and it is not until the 
close of the Vedic ritual that we have enumerations of them such as that of the 
Baudhayana Dharma Sitra,!° which gives in a late passage sun, moon, 
Angaraka, Budha, Brhaspati, Cukra, Canaiccara, Raihu and Ketu. Planetary 


1 RV. vii. 16. 8; x. 70. 8 and ofteninthe 7 VS. xxviii. 8. 


Apri hymns. § 11.81.43; v. 41.19; 42.1; x. 64.10. 
* RV. x. 95. 18; see Keith, JRAS. 1918, ° See above, Chap. 8, §§2-5, 8; Chap.9, § 3. 
pp. 412-17. 0 ii. 5.9.9. A Kathaka frag. (Caland, Brah- 
3 RV. v. 41. 19. mana- en Stitra-Aanwinsten, pp. 8, 29) 
ppCRatn8, 58 sexier ono. has sun, Cukra, Brhaspati, Budha, 
* CB.1.8. 1.273 -xivi 954527 ACS. 1. 75,7, Arka, Saura, Rahu, and Ketu. 


° Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 877, n. 6. 


Chap. 11] Constellations and Time Periods 201 


influences, signified in the term Grahas, ‘ seizers ’, applied to the planets, seem 
not to have troubled the imagination of the early Indians. 

The Naksatras figure early in the myths of Soma and his marriage with 
them which is recorded in the later Samhitaés and Brahmanas, and in the 
ritual they receive occasional offerings, but appear to be of little religious con- 
sequence.” The same consideration applies to the seasons, months and half 
months, the days and nights, and the year,® or even the night of new moon, 
that is when the moon is invisible, or the night of full moon, or the period 
when the moon first appears (amdvdsyd, paurnamdasi, dar¢a), though the latter 
three entities are honoured by Atharvan hymns.? More personality is ac- 
corded to the moon phases, Anumati, Sinivali, Raka, and Kuhi, which have 
already been denoted,® and still more to Ekastaka, a lunar day near the 
beginning of the year, which is celebrated as being the daughter of Prajapati, 
and the mother of Indra.* Such importance, however, as this or any other of 
the Astakas,’ lunar days in the middle of the fortnight of declining moonlight, 
may possess, is doubtless really due to connexion with the offerings then made 
to the Fathers, whose connexion with the moon was doubtless strongly felt, 
since it is accepted as a dogma in the Upanisads. 

In the domestic ritual we find the pole star,> Dhruva, accorded a measure 
of respect, and similar honour is paid to the Seven Seers,® that is the Great 
Bear, and Arundhati. The Seven Seers already receive in the Rigveda the 
credit of having in a time of trouble secured for Purukutsa’s wife a son, 
Trasadasyu, but in their case we have unquestionably to do with the concep- 
tion of the souls of the dead entering into the stars. They are said to have 
settled in heaven to practice asceticism, and with the five Adhvaryus to guard 
the hidden footprint of the bird, and their relation with the seven Hotrs on 
earth is obvious, whether it be that of prototypes or derivatives. The 
suggestion 1° that the five Adhvaryus denote the planets, because of the 
similarity of their movements to and fro may be deemed most implausible. 
Mysterious are the five Bulls who stand in the middle of the sky;" it is certain 


' Possibly they are meant in HGS.i.3.10.4, 7 Cf. CGS. iii. 12 ff.; AGS. ii. 4; GGS. iii. 
where Caka may be connected with the 10; PGS. ili. 3. 
mysterious Cakadhima of the Athar- * HGS. i. 7. 22. 14f.; cf. AGS. i. 7. 22; 
vaveda (vi. 128; SBE. xlii. 160, 532 ff.). BLGS. i. 19. 

* See above, Chap. 10,§38. Forthedomestic ° Seven Rksas ‘bears’, RV. i. 24. 10; 


ritual, see (GS. i. 25. 5 f.; ii. 14. 8; 
PGS. iii. 2. 8; GGS. ii. 8. 12. Images of 
the Naksatras are alleged to be referred 
to in (GS. iv. 18. 5, but dubiously. Cf. 
AV. xix. 7, 8, and Naksatrakalpa. 


identified with Seven Rsis, CB. ii. 1. 
2.4. Kor the Seers, CB: xii. 8.1. 9:5 
JUB. iv. 26. 12 (middle of the sky) ; 
RV. iv. 42.8; x. 109. 4; iii. 7. 7 (seven 
Vipras) ; vi. 22.2; x. 35.10 (Hotrs) ; 


% Offerings for the lunar day (tithi) of TA. i. 11. 2; HGS. i. 7. 22. 14 5, BhGS. 
birth, (GS.i. 25. 5f.; GGS. ii. 8. 12. i. 19. Cf. A. C. Das, Rig-Vedic India, 

4 AV. vii. 79-81. ° AV. vii. 20, 46, 48, 47. i, 875 ff. 

6 AV. iii. 10; Weber, IS. xvii. 218 ff.; %° Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 423. 

TS. iv. 8.11; HGS. ii. 5. 14.1ff. Cf. 4 RV.i. 105.10. The constellation Carkara, 

Agrahayani, as new year day, PGS. iii. Dolphin (¢cingumara), appears in JB. 

PUG Salie te Lick i. iii, 194; of. TA. ii. 19. 8. For the 


202 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


from the terminology that they are not the planets, and we may best suppose 
that they are the stars of some asterism, seen there by the Indian mind. 

Hillebrandt ! suggests that the pole star is to be found not merely in 
the Dhruva of the domestic ritual, but in the Aghnya to whose head the 
Acvins are said to fasten one wheel of their chariot, while the other encircles 
the heaven, comparing the view of later times that the sun, moon, and stars 
are fastened to the pole star. An alternative view makes the inviolable one 
the sun, and it is clear that to assume the pole star in the absence of any other 
hint of its existence in the Rigveda is unwise. He treats Etaca,? who is usually 
regarded merely as the steed of the sun, as the morning and evening star, com- 
paring him to the later Aruna, who does not certainly appear in the Vedic 
literature. Other efforts have been made to discover the Pleiades * and the 
Milky Way ‘ as wellas other stars in various mythological figures, but without 
marked plausibility. 


constellations in AB. iii. 33, see above, is mentioned among the Mitanni gods, 
Chap. 9, § 10. but implausibly. 
1 Ved. Myth. iii. 384; RV. i. 30. 19. 3 The Maruts, Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 
* Ved. Myth. (WK). Ausg.), p. 183; contrast 321, n. 1. 


p. 98; Ved. Myth. iii. 281-4. It has ‘ Sarasvati as the Milky Way, Hillebrandt, 
been suggested that Aruna, not Varuna, Ved. Myth. i. 382 f., but see iii. 377 f. 


CHAPTER 12 
ABSTRACT DEITIES AND SONDERGOTTER 


§1. The Nature of Abstract Deities 


Ir is unfortunate that no term has yet been found which can be used to 
describe the gods, who do not rest on the basis of some natural phenomenon or 
some activity which is taking place in external nature, without conveying the 
false impression which is created by the adoption of the current term 
‘abstract ’.1 The idea of the deification of an abstraction inevitably suggest 
that the god was the production of priestly speculation ; that he, therefore, 
could never be a really popular god ; and that it could not be felt that the god 
was active and powerful to help in the same way as a god based on some 
phenomenon of nature. This is clearly far from being the case : whatever the 
origin of the gods which are called abstract, many of them attained in India 
to genuine and real popular belief, and were every whit as much living to the 
popular mind as gods for whom we can see a basis in nature. 

The nature of some of the abstract gods is perfectly plain ; they are human 
faculties made divine, such as wrath or faith. There seems no distinction of 
principle between the act of mind which makes these passions divine, and 
that which makes external things or rather activities into gods: that the 
latter process comes before the former is only in keeping with the development 
of the self-consciousness of man, which appears to be at first directed on the 
external world, and then to be reflected upon the internal world in the normal 
sense of these terms. But deification of this sort seems to have been practised 
into the Indo-Iranian period, and, therefore, is not a new feature of the 
Vedic religion. 

A second class of gods who may be called abstract is afforded by the agent 
gods, such as Dhatr, whose name expresses a function which they perform, so 
that they can be called functional gods. In all the cases which are to be found 
in the Vedic literature we are able to say with a fair degree of plausibility that 
the conception formed itself from the use of the epithet in question in the 
first place of some concrete god, and then, after denoting that deity in the 
special field of action, it was gradually made into a separate deity concerned 
merely with the sphere of action in question. This, however, cannot be proved 
beyond doubt : it will for instance always be open to question whether Savitr 
is really an aspect of the sun, or whether he is god of stimulation who by reason 


1 Cf. Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 403, 404. expresses a different side of develop- 
‘Special deities’ or ‘ Sondergétter ’ ment; ‘symbolic’ also is inadequate. 


204 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


of similarity of nature has been made like to the sun. In other cases there can 
be less doubt: the god Visnu cannot really be explained as a god of wide 
stepping : he is a sun god, who happens to have a special sphere of activity. 

A third class of deities is closely allied to the preceding as far as the Vedic 
religion is concerned. While the agent gods are concerned each with some 
special aspect of activity, these gods take upon themselves the whole of 
activity and are therefore creator gods, and universal gods. In the Veda all 
of them seem to be traceable to epithets of other gods regarded as creators 
and universal lords, which have been chosen to be the designation of the 
supreme lord, to the conception of whom the religious and philosophic impulses 
of the Vedic poets inclined. 

As a fourth class we may reckon those deities who express a state, activity, 
or condition such as wealth, or destruction and misfortune, good fortune, 
greatness, fame, strength, or almost any other idea. It is often difficult in the 
extreme to decide what deities must be placed among the abstract deities as 
opposed to those which may be held to be concrete : the two classes flow into 
one another, and no absolute bases of distinction exist or can exist. Nor again 
in many cases can we know to what extent in personifications we have to do 
with real recognition of divine powers, nor what conceptions exactly attached 
to the personifications. It is clear that these ideas grew up in a period when 
the conception of evil spirits which threatened injury was well known, 
and this conception may have been matched with one which recognized good 
spirits which would afford help, and these spirits could be conceived in the 
most varied and unsystematic forms. The enumerations of divine personages 
who are asked to aid in many cases seem simply devices to secure the utmost 
degree of protection for the suppliant: the Stitras in particular seem often 
determined to invoke as many and as curiously varied deities as possible, 
reviving for the purpose gods? who would otherwise be held to be of no 
possible consequence, as well as providing us with deities elsewhere unknown 
and unheard of.* 


§2. Tvastr and other Agent Gods 


By far the most important of the agent gods is Tvastr, who is mentioned 
some sixty-five times in the Rigveda, most often in the late first and tenth 
books, but also in the family books, though rarely in the seventh of the 
Vasistha family, and in the eighth. Like the other gods of the Rigveda he 
goes to the heaven, and bestows blessings,* but his characteristic feature is the 


1 This phase of belief is that currently and it has a different psychological 
termed Animism or Polydaemonism. To aspect ; cf. Carnoy, Les Indo-Européens, 
trace to it the origin of all religion is p. 217. See above, pp. 71 ff. 
unscientific : it naturally connects with * Such as Ahi Budhnya or Apam Napat. 
other forms as in early Babylonian * e.g. Akaca, ‘ether’; PGS. i. 12. 2; 
religion (Farnell, Greece and Babylon, KhGS.i. 5.81; GGS.i. 4. 9. 


pp. 42, 43); it is not earlier than the ‘4 RV.x.10.5; AV. vi. 78. 38. 
animatistic worship of natural powers, 


Chap. 12] Tvastr and other Agent Gods 205 


iron axe, which he bears in his hand, and which marks him out as the skilled 
artificer. He forges the bolt of Indra, and the axe of Brahmanaspati, and 
especially the cup out of which the gods drink. He is, further, the power 
which shapes the germ in the womb for men and animals alike: he fashions 
husband and wife for each other from the womb, and presides over generation : 
so in the later Vedic texts! he is constantly mentioned in connexion with 
the making of forms, and the pairing of men and animals. These texts also 
ascribe to him the production of the horse. 

Tvastr stands in special relation to the human race in that his daughter 
Saranyi, wife of Vivasvant, produced the twins, Yama and Yami, whence 
came the human race. He is also father of Brhaspati, of Agni, and even of 
Indra, who, however, seems to have slain him for withholding from him the 
Soma. Indra also was hostile to Vicvariipa, the three-headed son of Tvastr, 
from whom he sought to win the cows: he slew Vi¢variipa, and, when 
Tvastr in anger refused to allow him to take part in his Soma sacrifice, Indra 
came and drank the Soma by force. As Tvastr is himself called more often 
than any other god Vicvaripa, it is difficult not to suspect that the connexion 
of Tvastr with Vicvaripa of the three heads is due to the similarity of name, 
and it is perhaps hence that there arises the hostility between Tvastr and 
Indra: the old character of the Vi¢variipa myth is vouched for by its Indo- 
European parallels. As son in law of Tvastr Vayu once is mentioned. 

In the Rigveda Tvastr is normally mentioned along with gods of similar 
character, such as Savitr, Dhatr, Prajapati, and, less naturally, Pisan. 
With Savitr he is twice * indeed, it seems, identified in the phrase ‘ god 
Tvastr, the stimulator, omniform,’ and the identification with Savitr and Pra- 
japati is asserted in the Kaucika Sitra.* In the ritual ® his most prominent 
feature is his combination with the divine ladies, who seem to be the wives of 
the gods, presumably because of his connexion with generation. We hear also 
of his daughters who cure Indra’s ophthalmic sleeplessness, and evoke him 
from a cow in which he takes refuge from Vrtra, thus becoming his mothers.® 

It results also from the special position of Tvastr with regard to genera- 
tion that, when in the Soma ritual at a certain point in the rite the wife of the 
sacrificer comes up to perform an act intended to be symbolic, and pro- 
ductive of the process of generation, she is brought up by the Nestr, the 
priest who stands in the closest relations to the god.’ 

The etymological sense of Tvastr seems clear: it is formed from a root 
tvaks, which has a parallel in the Avesta, and which has the sense of fashion, 
like the normal taks. Oldenberg ® considers that the god is no more than 
the personification of creative activity, and so far as the Rigveda goes it 


1TB.i.4.7.13; CB. xi. 4. 3. 3. Hopkins (Trans. Conn. Acad. xv. 49) 
2 TS. ii. 4.12.1; CB.i. 6. 3. 6. compares the legend in TS. vi. 1. 1. 5; 
3’ RV. iii. 55.19; x. 10. 5. CBs lea ts. 

4 Weber, Omina und Portenta, pp. 391, 392. 7 TS. vi. 5.8.65 CB.iv.4. 2.18. 

5 Asin RV. i. 22. 9, &c. 8 Rel. des Veda’, p. 237. Cf. the German Wie- 
6 


PB. xii, 5. 19%. For the’ eye motif land, E. H. Meyer, Germ. Myth., pp. 300 f. 


206 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part IT 


seems difficult to deny that this theory is adequate. On the other hand 
Hillebrandt,! who, for no adequate reason, suggests that the etymology may 
be really from some aboriginal word, is strongly of opinion that the mythical 
conception is the concrete one of the sun, his son Vievariipa being the moon. 
The theory is open as regards Vi¢varipa to fatal difficulty, but there is no 
objection, having regard to the case of Savitr, to see in Tvastr another case of 
an agent god, who has come into separate existence from being at first merely 
an epithet of a more concrete divinity. The post-Vedic mythology indeed 
regards him as an Aditya, but this fact is of very little consequence. Ludwig 2 
takes him to be a god of the year, but this is obviously much less likely than 
the suggestion of the sun as a great creative power. 

Tvastr figures also in the myth of the Rbhus making his cup into four ; 
even if the cup be the moon, as is possible, it does not shed any light either on 
the original nature of Tvastr or on his connexion with the moon. 

The other agent gods are of very minor importance. Dhatr, the creator, 
is a development, only found about a dozen times, and only once out- 
side the tenth book, of the epithet creator, applied to Indra or Vicvakarman, 
and often used of the priests as establishers of the sacrifice. He is the creator 
of the heaven, air, earth, sun and moon, is besought to grant offspring, 
a clear eye, and length of days, and in the post-Vedic period is a synonym of 
Brahman or Prajapati as the all-god. Vidhatr, ‘ disposer’, is used with 
Dhatr as an epithet of Indra and Vicvakarman once each : it in two enumera- 
tions 3 attains a slight existence. With Dhatr in its solitary occurrence in 
book vii is found Dhartr,* ‘ supporter ’, elsewhere an epithet of Indra and other 
gods. The god Tratr, ‘ protector’, is found five times > with other deities, 
referring perhaps to Savitr and Bhaga: the word is usually an epithet of Indra, 
Agni or the Adityas. A leader god, Netr, is invoked in one hymn only, and 
asked to lead to prosperity in life.6 Of goddesses we have Destri, who is 
invoked with Dhatr and Mataricvan in the marriage hymn, and the class of 
protectors, Varitri, known from the Rigveda onwards. 


§3. The Creator Gods 


Two hymns? of the Rigveda are devoted to the honour of Vi¢vakarman, 
who is described as all-seeing, with eyes, face, arms, feet, on every side, a 
trait which is preserved in the post-Vedic representations of the god Brahman. 
But he is also said to have wings, and stress is laid on his being lord of speech, 
and the source of all prosperity. He is styled Dhatr, and Vidhatr, the 
establisher of earth and the disposer of the sky, and also the highest apparition. 


1 Ved. Myth. i. 517; Hardy, Ved.-brahm. ‘* vii. 35. 3. 
Periode, pp. 30,31. Hillebrandt holds * RY. i. 106.7; iv. 45. 5, 7; viii. 18. 20; 


that Agni (RV. i. 95.2; x. 2.7) as son > PRY E 
of Tvastr is the moon. SEL .tvoUn 
2 Rigveda, iii. 833-5. 7 RV. x. 81, 82; 87.2; x. 170. 4. 


4 RV. vi. 50. 12; ix. 81.5. 


Chap. 12] The Creator Gods 207 


The name is applied as an epithet to Indra, and to the sun as all-creating, and 
probably it was from the latter god that it developed into a name for the 
creator active god: in the Briahmanas ! Vievakarman is identic with Praja- 
pati, and in post-Vedic literature he sinks to the humble level of the artificer of 
the gods. A class of Vi¢vasrj gods, all-creators, is just alluded to in the 
Brahmanas.? 

Prajapati is even a slighter figure than Vigvakarman in the Rigveda, and 
his name as a distinct deity occurs only four times, one late hymn being given 
to him.* In that hymn, however, as it now stands, in an appended verse his 
supremacy is clearly asserted, and in more effective manner than in the older 
hymns, when they assert the greatness of one of the popular gods. He is there 
said to have created and established the heaven and the earth, to be the lord 
of all that is, the king of all that breathes and moves about, god above the gods, 
whose ordinances the gods and all beings obey, and who embraces all creatures. 
The deliberate intention to set out the nature of a creator god is expressed in 
the fact that the hymnis put in interrogative form, and the answer is given in 
the last verse. The form of the hymn is of importance as it gave rise to the 
most weird of the gods created by the Indian imagination in the Vedic age, 
the god Ka, ‘Who?’ He is in the Brahmana literature expressly identified | 
with Prajapati,* but he is also in the ritual and in the Mantras distinguished | 
from that god, separate offerings to this abstraction from a pronoun being 
duly provided for. 

The name, Prajapati, means lord of offspring, and is applied once in the 
Rigveda * to Savitr, who is described as the Prajapati of the world, and the 
supporter of heaven, and also to Soma as compared with Tvastr and Indra. 
As a distinct deity Prajapati is naturally invoked to bestow offspring, in one 
case along with Visnu, Tvastr, and Dhatr; he is said to make cows prolific, 
and in the Atharvaveda and the other texts of the later literature his connexion 
with offspring is regularly referred to. But Prajapati is essentially in the later 
Samhitas and the Brahmanas regarded as the chief of the gods, and in special 
the father god, who produces everything, who is the father of the gods ® on 
the one hand, but also of the Asuras,’ and who is of course the first sacrificer.$ — 
Prajapati is the hero of the cosmogonic myths of the whole of the Brahmana 
period ; he creates the worlds and the Vedas,° and the castes.!° In the Siitras 
he is specifically identified with Brahman," the god, the masculine of the idea 
of Brahman, ‘ holy prayer,’ or the ‘holy power’. The predominance of 


1 CB. viii. 2.1.10; 3.18; AB. iv. 22. STAB. vaioe tists Dale Sotto sc ba Xi.1o.05) 5 

2 PRB. xxv. 18.2); verse in TB. ii1: 12. 9.7. JUB. iii. 15. 4-17.10 ; CU. iv. 17; SB. 

SRV. x. 121; 85.48 169.45 184.1. For i. 5.6-8. Cf. Geldner, Ved. Stud. ii. 189 
his later history see below, Part V. (RV. vii. 33. 7); Oertel, Trans. Conn. 

SET Sad. 7. 6.6. Acad. xv. 155 ff. 

PeIVe DS. 2 10 TS, vii. 1. 1. 4-6; PB. vi. 1. 6-18; JB. 

SPB. 1.3.4; CB. x1. 1.6.14: i. 68 f. ; Oertel, Trans. Conn. Acad. xv. 

re. i. 2.2.3. 196 ff. 

PCH, ii. 4.4. 13 vi. 2. 8.1. 1 AGS. iii. 4. 


208 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


Prajapati, however, is not in the slightest affected by the development of this 
god in the Brahmanas. 

Of the myths in which Prajapati figures, the most interesting by far is that 
of his incest with his daughter Usas,1 who changed herself into a gazelle, where- 
upon he assumed the form of the male animal corresponding to it. In the 
version of the Maitrayani Samhita ? Rudra aimed an arrow at him, but was 
induced to lay it aside by a promise of Prajadpati to make him the lord of 
beasts, if he did not shoot him. In the Aitareya Brahmana#* the gods in 
anger at the incest of Prajapati make from the most terrible substances the 
form of Rudra, who shoots Prajapati in the form of a deer, the myth being 
transferred to the sky, where the deer, Mrga, the archer Mrgavyadha, and the 
three-pointed arrow, Isu Trikanda, are pointed out. It is apparently a transfer 
to the god Prajapati as creator god of a legend which seems in the Rigveda * to 
be told, though in the most obscure terms of a father, who is probably to be 
taken as Dyaus with his daughter, presumably meant to be the earth, for an 
archer is alluded to in that legend. Elsewhere Prajapati is recorded to have 
given Usas in marriage to Brhaspati or Soma,® or to have married all his 
daughters, the Naksatras, to Soma.® 

Prajapati also appears in other animal forms, which is in keeping with his 
position as the great generator: his eye swells, and, because it did so (agvayat), 
the horse came into being ; he assumes the form of a boar in order to raise the 
earth out of the waters, a legend which is recounted in the Taittiriya Samhita ” 
and which is the starting-point of the boar incarnation of Visnu, and he also 
assumed the form of a tortoise to produce all creatures according to the 
Catapatha Brahmana,® whence arises the view that all men are the children 
of the tortoise. He is also identified with the primeval Purusa or giant from 
whom by the sacrifice the gods created the whole of the world, and also men 
and the gods. 

In the hymn ° addressed to him Prajapati bears the title of Hiranyagarbha, 
the golden germ, and this mention of him is itself elevated by the Atharvaveda! 
and by the later literature 4 to the rank of a supreme deity. In the Athar- 
vaveda he appears as the embryo, which is produced in the waters on the 
process of creation. His position is definitely identified with that of Prajapati 
in the Taittiriya Samhita, and in the post-Vedic literature he becomes the 
expression of the nature of the personal god, Brahman, as opposed to the 
impersonal Brahman. 

The Atharvaveda,’ which combines theosophy with magic in the most 


1 Oldenberg, SBE. xlvi. 78 ff. 

ANTVi oad oe 

3 iii. 88. Cf. CB. i. 7. 4.1 (Dyaus or Usas) ; 
PB. viii. 2. 10. 

Anise 100s exe Olea tes 
Myth. ii. 52 f. 

SI bo- 2183 (AB. iv. 7 ei BB ew xvi: 
Oertel, Trans. Conn. Acad. xv. 174; 
Bloomfield, JAOS. xv. 181. 


Hillebrandt, Ved. 


SVLS ll. 200. L seis Xi o See dleone 

7 Macdonell, JRAS. xxvii. 178 ff. 

Bev Il Oe ls ore 

POR VixX ees 

BOTs ase 

BL Sav Dake ae 

122 Deussen, Gesch. der Phil. I. i. 209 ff., 
264 ff.; Edgerton, Studies in honor of 
Bloomfield, pp. 117 ff. 


Chap. 12] The Creator Gods 209 


curious way, is fond of inventing new expressions for the supreme deity. Thus 
it looks upon Kala,! ‘ time’, as the one existing thing in the universe, and 
again it invents Skambha,? ‘ support ’, as the necessary substratum on which 
the structure of the universe must rest, and exalts it to the position of a 
supreme god. Prana, ‘ the breath ’, is also deified and identified with Praja- 
pati. Another god, Rohita,* is doubtless really an epithet of the sun as ‘ruddy’, 
but it becomes identified by the Atharvaveda with Prajapati: the alternative 
theory presented by Bloomfield * that it is the development of the abstraction 
of red as advantageous for all those suffering from jaundice is not indeed 
inconceivable, but it is not necessary and, therefore, should not be preferred 
to the more obvious explanation which presents itself.6 Even in that text 
the Vratya,’ who is the un-brahmanical Aryan when induced to enter the 
Brahmanical fold by a performance of some complication, the Vratya Stomas, 
is celebrated as a universal god, a fact which has erroneously been interpreted 
as an allusion to the worship of the god Civa by a special section of the popula- 
tion. The remains of the sacrificial offering * are also celebrated as being the 
supreme god, and naturally so also the Brahmacarin or Brahman student,® as 
well as other figures. To these aberrations of the Atharvaveda no attention is 
paid subsequently. 

On the other hand the god Brahman is not found even in the Atharvaveda 
and still less in the other Samhitis. He may be traced merely in such later 
texts 1° as the Taittiriya 4 and the Kausitaki Brahmanas.!* The earlier con- 
ception in this case is unquestionably the neuter, Brahman, which denotes the 
prayer, the spell, and also more widely the holy power, whether embodied in 
the prayer or spell or manifested in the universe. The transition to the 
personal god is to be seen in the phrase, the world of Brahman : in its earliest 
occurrences that phrase may mean no more than the place of the Brahman, 
but it was inevitable, even if this is the case, that the idea of a personal god, 
whose world was meant, should have superseded the older idea. But it must 
be recognized that in the Vedic period there is no trace whatever of Brahman 
becoming a god of such importance as to supersede Prajapati. The im- 
portance of the god Brahman can be shown only for a period during the 
development of Buddhism, since in the Buddhist texts we find many refe- 
rences to Brahman as apparently a very great and popular god among the 
Brahmans. He bears there an epithet Sahampati, which cannot be explained 
by anything known in the Brahmana literature, and this suggests that he may 


AV. xix. 58, 54. 10 Keith, Aitareya Aranyaka, pp. 304, n. 23 ; 
STAN 5 Xo O. 367; JRAS. 1910, p. 216; Windisch, 
3 AV. xi. 4. Buddha’s Geburt, p. 33 ; Deussen, Phil. 
“ AV. xiii. 1-3; TB. ii. 5. 2. 1-8. of Up., p. 199, who wrongly sees the god 
® The Symbolic Gods, pp. 42 ff. in AU. iii. 3. He occurs in BAU. iv. 
6° Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. ili. 407. A Ae CUS Ibs 1s Ae a ran, Often 
7 AV. xv. 1;-above, Part II, Chap. 9, § 10. in the Sitras. 

SAV xT eee gta Wren 1 

NS NAPS. 7 4eige a BF oF tN Sr Qh (le 


14 [u.0.s. 31] 


210 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II* 


have been specially in honour among the eastern tribes of the Indians, and 
have received among them an epithet which is not recorded in our texts, which 
are essentially of the middle country lying further to the west than the home 
of the earliest Buddhism. It is of importance to note that in the Upanisads, 
where, if anywhere, the mention of Brahman as the creator god would be 
expected to be frequently found, it is comparatively rare, and Prajapati 
is the normal name of the creator, and so in the Sitra texts also. 


§ 4. Subjective Deities 


The clearest example of what may be called physical or subjective deities 
in the Rigveda is Manyu, ‘wrath’, who is invoked in two hymns.! He is 
described as self-existent, irresistible. Heslays Vrtra, bestows wealth, grants 
victory like Indra, and is accompanied by the Maruts : doubtless the concep- 
tion is deduced from that of the wrath of Indra as a destructive force. Tapas, 
mentioned along with him, denotes ardour : the conception plays a part of the 
utmost importance in Vedic cosmogony, as a refined form of physical heat, but 
it is hardly directly deified. The Rigveda? also deifies Craddha, ‘ faith,’ 
through which the fire of sacrifice is kindled, ghee offered, and wealth obtained, 
and which is invoked at morning, midday, and night. The Brahmanas* make 
her out to be the daughter of the sun, or of Prajapati. The conception clearly 
means belief in the existence and the generosity of the gods in its first appear- 
ance : its decay in the process of the religion will be dealt with later. 

In the Atharvaveda * is found the conception of Kama, ‘ desire ’ or ‘ love’. 
He is described as the first to be born, and he has arrows ® which pierce all 
hearts. He is not, however, as far as appears from the scanty notices we have 
of him a god primarily of human love, though that side of his character may 
have existed from the first or have been soon attributed to him. In his cosmic 
aspect, which is in accordance with the theosophic tone of the Atharvaveda 
the one in which he is described in it, he is probably derived from the 
mention of Kama in one of the most important cosmogonic hymns of the 
Rigveda ® as the first seed of mind, regarded also as cosmic. It is not until 
the later literature in the last strata of the epic that we meet with the Indian 
Cupid with his arrows, who is described as the disturber of the hearts of men 
whom he vexes with the pangs of love.’ 


1 x. 83, 84. Soin the Siitras Balis are offered, offerings, ApDS. i. 9. 26. 13; PGS. iii. 
KhGS. i. 5. 81; GGS.i. 4.10; ApDS. 12. 9; GDS. xxv. 4; BDS. ii. 1. 34; 
i. 9. 26. 13. iv. 2. 10. 

* x. 151; Oldenberg, ZDMG. 1. 450ff.; ° AV. iii. 25. 1. Eros in Boeotia is a pro- 
Bloomfield, Rel. of Veda, pp. 186 ff. bable parallel; Farnell, Greece and 

ALB. lls os AGs 1s Oe elisel ed he Babylon, p. 181. 

4 ix.2; xix.52. For Balisin theSiitras,see * RV. x. 129. 4. 


KhGS. i. 5. 81; GGS. i. 4. 10; other 7 Hopkins, Rel. of India, p. 416, n. 3. 


Chap. 12] Deified States or Conditions 211 


§5. Deified States or Conditions 


Of these divine figures special interest attaches to Aramati, ‘ devotion’, 
who is also described as the great one : in the Avesta Aramaiti is a genius of the 
earth and also of wisdom, and there seems no real reason for objection to the 
view that the personification goes back to the Indo-Iranian period, though 
it is doubtful whether we can see in the Rigvedic epithet ‘ great ’ a suggestion 
that the earth which often bears this epithet was placed under the care of this 
spirit, and still more whether we can believe Sayana’s assertion that Aramati 
is the earth. Another spirit who may with propriety be referred to the Indo- 
Iranian period is Puramdhi,? whose name occurs some nine times in the 
Rigveda: she is usually mentioned along with Bhaga, who himself is a 
representative of this class of gods, but who has become an Aditya, twice or 
thrice with Pisan and Savitr, and once with Agniand Visnu. She clearly 
corresponds to the Avestan Parendi, who is normally ranked as goddess of 
plenty and abundance: the view of Hillebrandt * sees in her and in the 
Vedic Puramdhi a goddess of activity : the scanty evidence leaves us with no 
conclusive means of testing either version, especially as the two ideas can be 
made by a little ingenuity almost synonymous. A goddess Dhisana 4 
who is mentioned about a dozen times in the Rigveda ® may also be a goddess 
of abundance or of impulsion. Anumati, ‘favour of the gods’, is twice 
personified in the Rigveda,® and is besought to be propitious and to grant long 
life. In the Yajurveda and in the Atharvaveda she appears as a goddess who 
presides over propagation and favours love, and in the Siitras.she is clearly 
understood as connected with the moon, denoting the day before full moon.’ 
It is difficult to suppose that this view of the deity is anything but a later 
conception, for there is nothing to support it in the early mention of the deity. 
Sinrta,® ‘ bounty ’, is here and there personified in the Rigveda, while on the 
contrary the spirit of niggardliness, Arati,® ‘ avarice’, is represented as a 
demon in the Atharvaveda. Asuniti,!® ‘ spirit leading ’, is besought in the 
Rigveda in one hymn to grant long life. 

Most of these abstractions are clearly rather thin and feeble, and some at 
least seem more poetic than living realities. This is not, however, the case 
with the goddess Nirrti, dissolution, or misfortune, who is found in the Rigveda 4 
as a personification presiding over death. In the ritual the reality of Nirrti 


1 Hopkins, op. cit., p. 186; Hillebrandt, this deity speculations on sexual ele- 
Ved. Myth. iii. 405; Moulton, Early ments in Vedic conceptions of deity, 
Zoroastrianism, p.98 ; Carnoy, Muséon, which to me as to Oldenberg carry no 
xiii. 127 ff.; Sadyana, RV. vii. 36. 8; conviction (GGA. 1919, pp. 357-9). 
viii. 42.3. That Arais connected with ° Pischel, Ved. Stud. ii. 82 ff. ; Oldenberg, 
épage is improbable. ' SBE. xlvi. 120 ff. 


2 Pischel, Ved. Stud.ii. 202-16 ; Bloomfield, ° x. 59.6; 167. 3. 
JAOS. xvi. 19. 7 Weber, Ind. Stud. v.229; see above, p.199. 
3 VOJ. iii. 188-94, 259-73. § RV.1..40. 8; x. 140. 2. 
‘ Johannson (Uber die altindische Géttin * AV.v.7. 10 x, 59. 5, 6. 
Dhisana und Verwandies) has based on 1+ Macdonell, Ved. Myth., p. 120. 


14* 


212 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


appears in the many rites, which are mentioned in connexion with her, and 
which display certain marked peculiarities. The Maitrayani Samhita 4 
connects with her specifically dice, women, and sleep as the three most evil 
things. Her ceremonies are performed with black grain or with nail parings. 
The sacrificial fee in such cases is a black cow with imperfect horns. In the 
piling of the fire altar, black bricks are built in for her. In the consecration of 
the king the wife of the king who has failed to give him a child is brought into 
connexion with Nirrti, and the oblations to that deity are offered in her 
house.?. Other points in the ritual affecting her will be noted later on. 

Another deity which is of importance in the popular thought, but which is 
very late in appearing in the literature, is the goddess Cri, first definitely 
recorded in literature in the Catapatha Brahmana.? She was, however, as we 
know from representations of her which are found among the early records of 
Buddhist art,* really a concrete goddess in the eyes of her votaries, though 
there is no reason to doubt her abstract origin. It is very possible, however, 
that she was assimilated to the goddess of the earth, which as Bhtimi is not 
rarely mentioned in the Sitra literature. Cri appears in the Sutra literature, 
where we find at the offering to the All-gods that it is prescribed to make 
offerings at the end of the bed to Cri, at the foot to Bhadrakali, and in the 
privy to Sarvannabhiti.® Bhadrakali suggests of course the name of Civa’s 
fierce wife Kali, and carries us to the very end of Vedic ideas, since Kali does 
not occur in any Vedic text: the other two though localized cannot be 
regarded as in origin other than abstract deities, Sondergétter,® having regard 
to the somewhat unimportant and artificial character of the place allotted to 
Cri, and to the consideration that the names occur only in a list of oblations 
to the All-gods, and not in a separate list. In post-Vedic mythology Cri or 
Laksmi is the wife of Visnu, but of these conceptions the Veda save at the 
close is ignorant.’ 

Other examples of these abstract deities of the Sondergétter type are to be 
found in the Siitras. Thus in the worship of the furrow, Sita, which is itself 
concrete, we find that in addition to her there should be invoked the goddess 
Yaja, who is nothing else than the action of sacrificing, Cama, which is 
exertion, and Bhuiti which is prosperity : the guardians of the furrow there 
invoked are probably to be taken as personifications of nature, but con- 
ceivably may be treated as mere abstractions. But this constant mention 


PAL W EP both Cri and Laksmi are dubious ; VS. 

* Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 406. Follow- 9.0.0) yp .o.e.ab. eC AMM Ia Tie [iy PIR 
ing Speyer, Henry (La magie dans TB. ii. 4:° 6.63 CB. xiv. 822019 tos 
V Inde antique, pp. 160 ff.) sees in her a BDS. ii. 5.9.10; Mahanar. Up. xxxv. 
goddess of earth; see TS. iv. 2. 5; 2eeHG Seis te 


KS. xvi. 12; VS. xii. 64. Cf. Arbman, ‘ E.g. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, p. 217. 
Rudra, p. 261. Connexion with Ner- * (GS. ii. 14. 10 ff. 
thus is most dubious. ‘ PGS. ii. 17. 18 ff. (GGSiive 2.27. 

* xi. 4. 3. 1; Samhita references seen by 7 Thus such a Sitra as the Bharadvaja 
Scheftelowitz (ZDMG. Ixxv. 37-50) for ignores both. 


Chap. 12] Deified States or Conditions 213 


of these kinds of deities with the most concrete is proof that they were not 
felt to be any different in essence by the people, for whom the Sitras were 
composed. Thus in the ceremony of handing over the pupil ! by the teacher to 
the charge of various powers the list includes besides Sarasvati and the 
Acvins, Kasaka elsewhere unknown, perhaps Kreana or Karc¢ana is meant, 
Antaka, Aghora, diseases, Yama, Makha, the sacrifice personified as often, 
Vacini, ‘ the ruling lady,’ earth with Vaicvanara, waters, herbs, trees, heaven 
and earth, welfare, holy lustre, the All-gods, all beings, and all deities, where 
the distinction between the older group of the All-gods ? and the later con- 
ception of all the gods is noteworthy. A very remarkable list is given in the 
formula of the Tarpana recorded in the Grhya ritual as accompanying the 
close of Vedic study. The deities honoured, all in the same manner, are Agni, 
Vayu, Strya, Visnu, Prajapati, Viripaksa, Sahasraksa, Soma, Brahman, 
the Vedas, the gods, the seers, the metres, the Om, Vasat and Mahavyahrti 
calls, the Savitri, which is treated with great respect in the Jaiminiya 
Upanisad, the sacrifice, heaven and earth, the Naksatras, the atmosphere, 
day and night, the numbers, the twilights, the oceans, the rivers, the moun- 
tains, fields, herbs, trees, Gandharvas and Apsarases, serpents, birds, Siddhas, 
Sadhyas, Vipras, Yaksas, Raksases—all classed as Bhitas, beings—Cruti, 
Smrti, firmness, delight, success, thought, belief, insight, memory, cows, 
Brahmans, movable and immovable things, and all beings, as well as various 
teachers and ancestors, paternal and maternal.* In the list of offerings of the 
human sacrifice, a pure piece as we have it of priestly imagination, there is 
ample room for abstractions ; a Brahman is offered to the Brahman class, 
a warrior to the royal power, a Ciidra to asceticism, a thief to night, a murderer 
to hell.4 More real are offerings at the Pravargya to glory, fame, strength, 
and prosperity, and at the Vajapeya to rivalry and desire to succeed.® It is 
impossible to discern any distinction between such offerings and those pre- 
scribed for such more apparently concrete deities as the .asterisms, Cravana, 
Mrgaciras or Acvayuj, the full moon in the months Cravana, Margacirsa, 
or Acvayuja, the autumn, the winter, the quarters, &c.6 At the opening of 
Vedic study Paraskara’? lays down offerings to the earth and Agni for a 
student of the Rigveda, the atmosphere and Vayu for one of the Yajurveda, 
the heaven and the sun in the case of the Samaveda, and the quarters and 
the moon in the case of the Atharvaveda. In allcases offering is also to be made 
to Brahman, the metres, Prajapati, the gods, the seers, faith, insight, Sadas- 
aspati, and Anumati. Acvaladyana’s list § for this occasion includes besides 
faith and insight, knowledge, memory, and the Savitri. In the Bali offerings ° 
of the householder we find the curious admixture of concrete and abstract 
deities ; thus Paraskara gives as recipients Brahman, Prajapati, the deities of 


HGS, 1..6. 5. > Hillebrandt, Rituallitteratur, pp. 135, 141. 
* Vigve and Sarve devah. Cf. AV. xi.6.19f.;  ° Ibid. pp. 77 f. 

Kaue. lvi. 13. ites LO ite 
2 CGS. iv. 9; AGS. iii. 4; PGS. ii. 12. Pili. SaiA, 


Sev. RKx sds 4. 1 it. ® PGS. ii.9 ; CGS. ii. 14. 5 ff.; GGS.i. 4. 5 ff. 


214 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


the house, Kacyapa, Anumati, these offerings being made in the fire; in the 
water-pot offerings are made to Parjanya, the waters, and earth; to Dhatr 
and Vidhatr at the doorposts, and further offerings are prescribed for the 
deities of the quarters, Vayu, Brahman, the atmosphere, the sun, the Vicve 
Devas and all beings, Usas, and the lord of beings. At the harnessing of the 
plough we find offerings made to Indra, Parjanya, the A¢vins, the Maruts, 
Udala-kacyapa, Svatikaéri—perhaps Sphatimkari, ‘she who gives abun- 
dance ’—Sita, and Anumati. The Yava, barley, is invoked to ward off 
enemies, possibly an idea evoked by the apparent connexion of the word 
with the root yu.} 

We hear also in the Kaucika Sitra? of an enumeration such as Agni, 
Brahman, Udaiikya, Cilvana, Catrumjaya, Ksatrana, Martyamjaya, Marty- 
ava, Aghora, Taksaka, Vaicaleya, Hahahiht, &c. Of these some have 
obviously reality of some kind or another: Taksaka is a famous snake, and 
Hahahihii seem to be two Gandharvas. We learn also* of goddesses who 
weave, spin, spread out, and draw the threads of a garment, of night walkers 
and day walkers,‘ of divine hosts and hosts not divine; ®* in the funeral ritual ® 
Khyatr, Apakhyatr, Abhilalapant, and Apalalapant are addressed ;? and the 
list of some more or less abstract figures which are addressed as in some degree 
sacred might be considerably lengthened both from Vedic times and later on, 
such as the Ghosini, who guards the cattle at pasture,® or Dhanvantari, who 
in the epic becomes the physician of the gods,® and who is possibly ?° an old 
cloud deity, ‘ whose boat is the cloud island’. 

One collective class is found early, the Bhitas, beings, whence Rudra 
derives his style of Bhitapati, lord of beings. The generality of the term is 
certain for the Vedic literature; the Bhitayajiia, offering to beings, is 
generic in character," and there is not the slightest reason to doubt that this 
was its early sense. The theory * that there was originally a Bhitayajfia 
confined to certain inferior divine figures, which, owing to the ambiguity of the 
term, and the tendency of the priests to idealize the popular religion, came to 
be made into a sacrifice for all beings, is wholly unsupported and most im- 
plausible. The term Bhit in modern usage has come to denote a malevolent 
spirit of the dead, one who has existed, and has ceased to exist, but this is 
palpably not its early meaning ; indeed even in modern usage it is applied to 
nature spirits as well as to ghosts,!° and it is impossible to show that in the 


1 Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 407. CGS. ii. 14. 2 (Bharadvaja Dhanvantari). 

* Kaue. lvi. 13. © Louis H. Gray, JAOS. xlii. 323 ff. 

3 PGS.i. 4.18. Cf. AV. xiv. 1. 45, 1 (GS. ii. 14; AGS. i. 2. 3; PGS. ii. 9; 

‘ AGS. i. 2. 7, 8. GGS. i. 4; KhGS. i. 5. 20ff.; also 

> GGS. iv. 8. 4. decisively CGS. iv. 9; AQS. iii. 4. 1. 

® Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 407. 2 Arbman, Rudra, pp. 193 ff. His render- 

7 Caland, Todten- und Bestattungsgebréuche, ing of TS. vi. 2. 8. 3; MS. iii. 8. 5; 
p. 62. KS. xxv. 6 (p. 218) is impossible. 

* CGS. ni, 9. 1. #8 Arbman, pp. 168 ff. 


* Kane, lxxiv. 63’ AGS.1212 3.3, 6271900: 


Chap. 12] Deified States or Conditions 215 


Vedic period it had any specific sense 1 referring to inferior or hostile demons. 
The wide sense of beings is natural enough for a religion which saw divinity 
readily on every side, and is probably merely a recognition of popular belief. 
It is a striking fact that in the medical literature ? the Bhitavidya is by no 
means confined to evils brought about by evil spirits, but includes those caused 
by the gods. The tendency of the term to become narrowed down to hostile 
beings in later literature * is interesting, but not surprising in view of the much 
more remarkable history of Asura. The origin of the limitation can be traced 
to the domestic ritual, in which the Bhitayajfia was artifically differentiated 
so as to create a distinct Devayajiia, with the result that there seemed to be 
some opposition between Bhitas and Devas, though the original Bhitayajiia 
covered all those beings to whom it was deemed wise to make offering when 
man partook of food. 

We have traces of classes of Sondergétter in the long enumerations in the 
Catarudriya, whether we assume that these classes are assimilated to Rudra 
or treated as independent objects of devotion.* In either case we have, 
as in the Roman Indigitamenta, priestly ingenuity working on primitive con- 
ceptions. A similar spirit is seen in the elaborate discrimination of aspects of 
gods, as when the Maruts are separately invoked as Svatavas, Samtapana, 
Grhamedhin and Kridin, differences which are obviously rather hieratic than 


popular.® 
$6. Aditi and Diti 


The place of Aditi in the Vedic pantheon is very remarkable, if, as is on the 
whole most probable, she is to be regarded as an abstract deity. She has, 
indeed, no entire hymn in the Rigveda, but she is mentioned not less than 
eighty times, and in the great majority of these with her sons, the Adityas. 
Of her personality little is said beyond the fact that she is intact, extended, 
bright, and luminous, a supporter of creatures, an epithet enjoyed by Mitra 
and Varuna, and belonging to all men. She is invoked at morning, noon, and 
evening. While the Adityas are normally her sons, she is once said to be their 
sister, and to be the daughter of the Vasus.* She appears in the Yajurveda ” 
once as the wife of Visnu: in the post-Vedic mythology she is especially the 
daughter of Daksa and the mother of Vivasvant, and of Visnu, but also of 
all the gods. 

Aditi is constantly invoked to release from sin: in this respect she stands 
in the closest connexion with Varuna, who fetters the sinners. Varuna, 
Agni, Savitr, and other gods are besought to release from sin before her. 
But in some cases the goddess cannot be distinguished from the primitive 


1 Arbman, p. 180, suggests Gespenster. ‘ Arbman, pp. 2380 ff. 

* Sucruta, i. 3. 10. 5 Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 325 f. 

* Possibly in CU. vii. 1.2,4; 7.1, but this ‘° RV. viii.101.15; cf. AV. vi. 4.1. 
is quite unproved. The wide sense 7 TS. vii. 5.4; VS. xxix. 60. 
occurs later, e.g. Manu, ili. 93, 


216 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


sense of the name, which denotes unbinding, or freedom from bonds. The 
Adityas are besought to place the offering in sinlessness and freedom from 
bonds,! and a worshipper seeks to be given back to great Aditi to seek his 
father and mother again.? Aditi thus is asked to release her worshippers like 
bound thieves. 

Aditi, however, appears in other connexions than the freeing from sin. 
Not only the Adityas, but all the gods are said to be born from her: as the 
sky she supplies them with honied milk. But the Taittiriya Samhita * and 
other texts expressly assert her identity with the earth, and by the time of the 
Naighantuka this is so much the accepted version that the word is placed as 
a synonym for earth. But she often in the Rigveda ? is clearly differentiated 
from both. Again she is identified pantheistically with sky, air, mother, 
father, son, the five tribes, what has been or shall be. Daksa, who is her son, 
is also her father,6 and she appears as celebrating Savitr and producing 
a hymn for Indra. 

More important is the fact that Aditi is sometimes at least conceived as 
theriomorphic, a fact which is clearly shown by the fact that in the ritual’ 
a cow is addressed by her name. It is also to be seen, however, in the Rigveda 
itself: where not only is she occasionally spoken of as a cow,’ but Soma is 
compared to her milk, and milk must be meant in the daughter of Aditi, who 
yields to Soma as he flows to the vat. 

Though rarely, Aditi is credited with the usual powers of the gods, and is 
prayed to for wealth and other boons: the special gift of light which she 
bestows may be due to her connexion with the Adityas. 

The explanations of Aditi differ widely, according as she is treated as an 
abstract or a concrete deity. Pischel ® holds that she is the earth, but this is 
not borne out by anything save the view of the later Vedic texts, and does not 
suit at all the picture of the goddess presented in the Rigveda. Hillebrandt,1° 
in fairly close agreement with one view of Roth’s,! that she is the eternal 
principle underlying the celestial light, urges that she is essentially connected 
with light and the highest heaven, and explains her as the light of day in its 
imperishable aspect, a view which agrees in substance with that of Colinet !* 
that she is the light of the sky, thus in essence a sort of feminine form 
of Dyaus. This in some measure agrees with the theory of Bergaigne * that 
the goddess is a development from the phrase Dyaus Aditi, supplying the gods 
with milk as the boundless sky, but in his view stress is laid on the imperish- 
able nature of the light, not on the boundless space of the sky. Max Miiller 4 


PAR Vecvitnotsl ose OOaroe 

**RViai. 24715. e. 4. 185.0. ® Ved. Stud. ii. 86. 

% Apparently alsoin RV.i. 72.9; AV. xiii. 1° Ved. Myth. iii. 408 ff. Cf. RV. i. 115. 5. 
1. 38. * x) O8310; 1 ZDMG. vi. 68 ff. 

SOL Viellee SO0nLO; % Trans. 9th Or. Congress, i. 396-410 ; 

SERVE X..t aa os Muséon, xii. 81-90. 

’ Bergaigne, Rel. Véd. i. 325. 18 SBE. xxxii. 241. 


41. 158.8 5 vill. 101.515 3x. 11, 1s ix. 06. »™ Rel. éd. 111. 88-06; 


Chap. 12] Aditi and Diti 217 


takes the view that the boundless sky as the expression of visible infinity is 
the phenomenon meant. Wallis ! and Oldenberg,? on the other hand, acquiesce 
in the view that Aditi denotes simply freedom from bondage. Oldenberg, 
however, lays stress also on the fact that Aditi is regarded as a cow, and that 
the gods appear as cow-born and suggest that there may have been a tradition 
according to which the celestial gods are the offspring of a celestial cow,® 
or cow fetish. It is difficult to understand exactly how he considers this 
concept related to that of Aditi, and in point of fact it is very doubtful 
whether the stress laid upon the idea of the cow is to be justified by the 
appearance of the cow in the mythology. It seems rather that the cow is 
not a primitive conception, but a secondary view. 

An interesting suggestion of the origin of Aditi is due to Macdonell,* and 
on the whole it has more to say for it than any other explanation of the 
deity. The Adityas are here and there called sons of Aditi, and he suggests 
that, just as Cavasi is found in the Rigveda itself as the name of Indra’s 
mother, arising from the phrase ‘ son of strength (¢avas) ’, applied to Indra 
as the most strong one, so Aditi was conjured up from a phrase meaning sons 
of freedom or rather perhaps guiltlessness. The personification would then by 
a most natural and simple process be invested with the leading characteristics 
of her sons, as the mother of the Adityas she would be brought into conjunction 
with heaven and earth, the universal parents, while she would retain her 
special connexion with the idea of freedom. In that case Aditya would be a 
term produced and applied to Mitra, Varuna, and the other gods after Aditi 
had been created, and the original gods, who were called sons of freedom or 
guiltlessness, would probably be Mitra and Varuna, and perhaps some others. 
It must be assumed that these others had already been formed into a close 
group before the separation of the Indo-Iranian stems as the connexion of the 
group of Adityas with the AmeSa Spentas is obviously probable if it cannot be 
proved, but there is no objection to this view to be raised on the ground of the 
theory of Aditi here accepted, since it is clear in any case that the name 
Aditya is an invention of India. 

Compared with Aditi the goddess Diti is merely a name. She occurs thrice 
in the Rigveda,® twice with Aditi, who with Diti is said to be seen by Mitra 
and Varuna from their car. Agni is also begged to grant Diti, and preserve 
from Aditi. Finally Diti is said to give what is desirable. In the later 
Sarbhitas ® she appears as a colourless deity beside Aditi, except that in the 


* Cosmology, pp. 45 ff. Cf. von Schroeder, pp. 76-80). 
Arische Religion, ii. 400. 4 Ved. Myth.,p.122. Bloomfield’ssuggestion 

* Rel, des Veda*, pp. 202 ff.; SBE. xlvi. (The Symbolic Gods, p. 45) that Aditya 
329. Geldner (Zur Kosmogonie des RV., means ‘ from of old’ is opposed to the 
p- 5) holds that Aditi is ‘ undivided- usage of the language, and in Rel. of 
ness ’, ‘ completeness ’. India, p. 131, it is not pressed. 

* RV. vi. 50.10; vii. 385.14. In Greece we  * y, 62.8; iv. 2.11 (both with Aditi) ; vii. 
have a cow-headed figure in Arcadia 15.12: 


(BCH. 1899, p. 635) and Here’s epithet 6 AV. xv. 18.4; xvi. 6.7; VS. xviii. 22. 
Boopis (Farnell, Greece and Babylon, 


218 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part 11 


Atharvaveda ! we find already mentioned the Daityas as her sons: in the 
post-Vedic mythology the gods and the Daityas are the sons of Aditi and 
Diti respectively, the common father being Daksa Prajapati. It is obvious 
that, even assuming that the second of these passages is not to be explained 
as having no connexion with deities at all, and as merely referring to giving 
and not-giving, regarded perhaps as powers, just as Arati in the Atharvaveda 
is deified, the existence of Diti is merely derived from Aditi, and that it is idle 
to give any real meaning to such a personality.’ 


§7. The Wives of the Gods 


In some cases the wives of the gods are obviously based on natural 
phenomena, the relation of two such phenomena presenting for some reason or 
other traits which suggest their close connexion : the primeval pair is that of 
heaven and earth, and on this doubtless the other accounts of the marriages of 
the gods are in part based. Other examples are also obviously suggested by 
natural events : thus the wedding of Soma the king as the moon to the twenty- 
seven or twenty-eight Naksatras is a mythical account of the obvious relation 
of the moon to the constellations in question. Again, the wedding of Soma as 
the moon with the sun-maiden may conceivably be due to some primitive 
astronomical views. The making of the Dawn the wife of the Acvins is also 
explicable on mythological grounds. The wedding of the same goddess to 
Pisan, the sun-god, is also not unnatural. 

On the other hand, there are clearly cases in which the wife of the god is to 
be classed as an abstraction in the sense that she owes her existence not to any 
natural phenomenon at all, but merely to the application to the gods of the 
rule of human life which, in Vedic India, gave the man normally one wife, 
though it also allowed polygamy,* a fact which is reflected perhaps in the 
relation of the Gandharva with the Apsarases as well as in Soma’s many 
brides. Thus, Vedic religion sets beside the god Indra the goddess Indrani, 
who is merely his wife: the legend which makes them quarrel over an ape, 
Vrsakapi, has been alluded to. Varunani also occurs in the Rigveda, and the 
wife of Agni, Agnayi, the names of the deities being fashioned from those of 
their husbands precisely in the same way as feminine nouns are occasionally 
made from masculine stems. Rudrdani,* on the other hand, is not found until 
the Sutras, and, though she plays in the ritual a much more real part than that 
played by any of these other abstractions, still it is perfectly obvious that she 
is only a mere copy of her husband. Indrani occasionally receives offerings, 
and she has borrowed a trait or two from Usas, as for instance she is credited 


2 * Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, p. 218. Criand 
* Bergaigne, Rel. Véd. iii. 97 ; Max Miiller, Laksmi as wives of Visnu, and Uma as 
SBE. xxxii. 256. wife of Civa, have already been men- 

’ Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Index, i. 478, tioned as of more independent origin. 


479. 


Chap. 12] The Wives of the Gods 219 


with the thirty leagues which that goddess traverses in the day. The 
Aitareya Brahmana mentions Sena and Prasaha as Indra’s wives, obvious 
abstractions of his nature, and the later mythology gives him Caci from 
his epithet, ‘lord of strength’.2. As a body the wives of the gods are given 
a certain place in the ritual in connexion with Tvastr, receiving offerings 
especially at the new and full moon offerings. Mention is also made of pro- 
tecting deities who are the feminine counterpart of the agent gods, but who are 
rarely mentioned. 


1 MS. iii. 8.4; she receives a libation, e.g. * Bloomfield, ZDMG. xlvili. 548 ff. 
Selif Sen le SELES IVa Os mVoy X11 OL 


CHAPTER 13 
GROUPS OF DEITIES 
$1. The Dual Deities 


Tue type of the dual deities, who form quite a marked feature of the 
Rigveda in which some sixty hymns are addressed to such gods, is given by 
the pair Dyavaprthivi, heaven and earth, the primeval parents. The two 
individual gods are comparatively little mentioned in comparison with 
the pair: Dyaus has no hymn, Prthivi one only, and the pair have six. Other 
names are Dyavaksama, Dyavabhiimi or Rodasi, in which the male character 
of Dyaus, never perfectly established, has yielded to the prevailing femininity 
of Prthivi. The pair are two fathers, two mothers. They are the makers of all 
creatures, but also they are made by many individual gods, Indra, Vi¢vakar- 
man, Tvastr, or even produced from the sacrifice of the giant Purusa. One is 
a bull, the other a cow: they are unaging, they grant wealth, and are also wise 
and promote righteousness. They are also conceived as coming to the sacrifice 
or taking the sacrifice to the gods, but they are not of much importance in the 
ritual. They have, however, a hymn addressed to them in the Vaicvadeva 
Castra of the Agnistoma, and an offering is made to them by the plougher, 
with the result that Parjanya sends him rain. The priests liken the two to the 
oblation holders or the earth to the altar, and the sky to the sacrificial fee.” 

Mitra and Varuna have twenty-three hymns addressed to them as dual 
deities : the mythology is practically all borrowed from that of Varuna, and 
the chief point of interest is that the same phenomenon of double invocation 
can be seen in this case already in the Avesta. The priority of Mitra in the 
compound name has been argued ® to indicate the superior importance at one 
time of that god, but the order accords also with the preference of the language 
for the placing of the shorter word in such a compound in the first place.* 

With Indra Varuna shares nine hymns: the characteristics of both gods 
are ascribed to the pair, but also they are found with the warlike deeds given 
to Indra, and Varuna’s wisdom is celebrated. Indra appears with Agni in 
eleven hymns,’ as sharing in the Soma, as slayers of Vrtra and the Dasas, and 
also as skilled priests and offerers : once they are called—presumably because 
of their close connexion with each other—the Acvins. Indra and Vayu are 
seven times invoked in hymns together, and practically always in connexion 


1 TS. iii. 4. 3. 3. ° They are the gods of the new moon 
2 AB.i. 29.4; AV. xiii. 1. 46, 52. offerings, a curious connexion; Hille- 
3 Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda', p. 193. brandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 294-300. 

4 


Wackernagel, Altind. Gramm. II. i. 168. 


Chap. 13] The Dual Deities 221 
with the drinking of the Soma; the same feature is to be found in the two- 
hymns given to Indra and Brhaspati. Indra and Soma have two hymns : 
the deeds attributed are those of Indra. Indra and Pisan in their one hymn 
are described as the one drinking Soma, the other eating gruel or mush: else- 
where mention is made of their abode, to which the goat convoys the steed at 
the horse sacrifice. With Visnu, Indra in one hymn divides Soma-drinking 
and wide-stepping. 

Soma shares one hymn each with Pisan, Rudra, and Agni. For Soma and 
Pisan, Agni is invoked to put the ripe milk in the raw cows: Somaand Rudra 
are asked to set free from the fetter of Varuna. Agni and Soma are said to 
have released the stream, obtained the light: one is brought from heaven 
by Mataricvan, the other by the eagle from the rock. Except in this one hymn 
they appear only twice as a pair in the whole of the Rigveda, showing that the 
close connexion which existed in the ritual and in the later Samhitas was not 
primitive.t They appear several times in the Atharvaveda, and still oftener 
in the Yajurveda, where they are called the two eyes, or brothers, the sun 
being ascribed to Agni, the moon to Soma. In the ritual the victim which 
is offered before the main portion of the rite, or in the rite itself, is offered to 
Agni and Soma, and they also receive cakes, but not a share in the Soma, 
which certainly suggests that the Soma ritual had been fairly definitely 
settled before they were united as a joint deity. 

In isolated verses a few more pairs occur, Agni and Parjanya as pro- 
ducing the oblation and offspring respectively, and apparently as connected 
with Dyaus, Parjanya, and Vata. Dawnand Night appear as sisters, daughters 
of Dyaus, mothers of order, weaving the web of sacrifice, and the sun and 
moon appear as Siryamasa or Stiryacandramasa, who are little personified, 
but who are doubtless meant by the two bright eyes of Varuna or the two eyes 
of heaven. 


§2. Groups of Gods 


It is a characteristic trait of the Rigveda that some forty hymns are de- 
voted to the group of gods called All-gods, Vicve Devas, and the impression 
given by the Rigveda is borne out by the ritual in which the All-gods receive 
frequent attention.2 The fact must be carefully borne in mind in framing 
any theory as to the feeling of the poets as to the rank of the several gods : 
they must have known of these joint invocations, in which as many gods as 
possible are propitiated, and the same tendency to be catholic in the reverence 


1 Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, p. 95, n. 3, cor- animal victim preceding the Soma offer- 
recting Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. i. 461 ; ing is given to them. 
that they denote sun and moon is as ? Arbman (Rudra, p. 154, n. 3) suggests that 


improbable as that Indra and Agni are 
sun and moon. The connexion may be 
due to a Gautama (cf. RV.i. 93). The 
two gods were naturally enough con- 
nected as sacrificial, and hence the 


the term includes all the gods as 
opposed to the heavenly gods of the 
Vedic sacrifice; but this clearly is wrong, 
the term denoting the whole of the gods 
of the sacrifice taken collectively. 


222 The Gods and Demons of the Veda (Part IL 


paid to the gods is to be noted in the Sitras where offerings are prescribed to 
all the gods, including even unknown gods. The Rigveda already shows the 
tendency to set up individual gods as outside the number of All-gods : in the 
Sitras there is perfectly obvious the distinction between all the gods and the 
older All-gods.1_ The religious conception which lies at the back of it is one 
which can be paralleled from many religions. By inventing a comprehensive 
group no deity at any rate could justly complain that it had been passed over 
altogether. 

Of the other groups of gods the Maruts are the most important : they also 
in the Rigveda bear the name of Rudras. This group is, however, distin- 
guished from the Maruts in the later texts, and its number is placed at 11, 
though 33, which is the traditional number of all the gods, is given in the 
Taittiriya Samhita.2 The Adityas, who are seven or eight in the Rigveda, 
become 12 in the Brahmanas, and are often mentioned especially in contrast 
with the Afigirases, who are rather a priestly family than actual deities. With 
the Adityas and Rudras the Vasus are invoked in the Rigveda :‘ it is clear 
that there they are connected with Indra. But in the later texts they are 
connected with Agni, not Indra, and their number, not defined in the Rigveda, 
is fixed at 8, though the Taittiriya Samhita,® by a freak gives 833. In the 
Chandogya Upanisad ° we find five groups, Indra with the Rudras, Agni with 
the Vasus, Varuna with the Adityas, Soma with the Maruts, and Brahman 
with the Sadhyas. The last group is a set of gods of whom practically nothing 
can be said: they are mentioned occasionally from the Rigveda’ onwards, 
occurring in the usual way even in the Sitras, but except that they are ancient, 
nothing more is to be learned of their nature.® 

Kaug. lvi. 6. 
EY Fie ba 


Levi, La doctrine du sacrifice, pp. 65, 66. 


1 and Babylon, pp. 180 ff. The current 
2 

3 

Arvid On 4 eos Ge 

5 

6 

7 


view which finds triads in the Greek 
mysteries is given in Legge, Forerunners 
and Rivals of Christianity, i.ch. ii. We 
have only the three forms of Agni, and 
his three names and casual triads like 
Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman, for which we 


WWE BE 
iii. 6-10. 
x. 90. 7 (with gods and seers) ; i. 164. 50 ; 


8 


TS.hV13..419 8 300s 0216.) 1s) EB a vill. 
3.53; xxv. 8. 2 (before the gods) ; AB. 
viii. 12. 4 (with Aptyas) ; 14.3; HGS. 
ii. 19.1; CGS.iv. 9.3; BhGS. iii. 9. 


A triad of gods associated in worship or by 


connexion of descent is not known in 
Vedic religion, nor practically in Greek 
or Babylonian belief; Farnell, Greece 


need not seek any prototype in the 
Semitic Anu, Enlil, Ka, or Sin, Ramman, 
Samas ; the later Brahman, Rudra, 
Visnu appear only in Maitr. iv. 5; v. 
1, preluded by Mahanar. Up. xi. 12. 
See Hopkins, Origin of Religion, pp. 
294 ff. Cf., on Trita, Giintert, Der 
arische Weltkénig, pp. 380 ff. 


CHAPTER 14 
PRIESTS AND HEROES 
§1. The Priests of the Fire Cult 


Wir the cult of fire are connected three great families of priests, the 
Aigirases, the Atharvans, and Bhrgus, in all of whose cases it is at first sight 
impossible, and in any case difficult, to decide whether we have to do with real 
traditions of priestly families of the past, or with deities who have fallen in 
rank and become confounded with men. The case of the Ajigirases is of 
special interest. Agni is not rarely called an Afgiras, but he is also called 
the chief or the most inspired Afigiras, and the name Afgiras is used in one 
passage of the god on the one hand, and on the other of the ancestor of the 
invoker of the god. On the other hand, Indra also is described as veriest 
Aiigiras, and in his feat of the overthrow of Vala the Aiigirases play a great 
part by their singing and their prayers. In point of fact the myth is sometimes 
attributed to them and not to Indra at all, or he is given a secondary role in it. 
They appear in the myth of the Panis as obtaining the cows: this is, it is 
probable, simply another side of the overthrow of Vala and the release of the 
cows, and Brhaspati who is credited with the same feat is once called Angirasa, 
and once even Afgiras. They are repeatedly called fathers by the poets, 
they are associated with Manu and are once with the Atharvans and the 
Bhrgus connected with Yama:! but they appear also with the Adityas, 
Rudras, and Vasus, Soma is offered to them, they are invoked,” and they are 
praised as sacrificers who attained Agni and won by the sacrifice immortality. 

A very important feature of the mythology is the quarrel of the Adityas 
and the Aiigirases, of which the Brahmanas give full accounts : the Afigirases 
proposed to win their way to heaven by sacrificing, and to make the Adityas 
act for them: they sent Agni to bid the Adityas perform that function, but 
the Adityas cleverly forestalled the Aigirases by undertaking the offering at 
once, so that the Aifigirases had to officiate for them to their indignation. 
They received, however, from the Adityas for their work the fee of a white 
horse, which is clearly the sun.’ 

On the other hand, there is abundant proof that the Angirases were treated 
by the poets as a real clan, and that many Vedic personages claimed to be 
descended from them : we cannot really doubt that there was such a family : 
in the Atharvaveda 4 we have clear enough evidence that the Atharvans and 
1 RV.x. 14. 3-6. brandt, Ved. Myth. ii. 166 ff. See also 
PRELY sik. G2e0)s lil. Dos ise Xa O2s JB. iii. 187 f. ; BCS. xviii. 22 f. 


* CB. iii. 5.1.13 ff.; AB. vi.34; KB.xxx. ‘4 Bloomfield, SBE. xlii. pp. xvii ff. 
6; PB. xvi. 12.1; GB. ii. 6. 14; Hille- 


224 _The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


the Afigirases were two sets of priests who contributed the former the auspi- 
cious, the latter the black magic side of that Veda. We find many points in 
the ritual such as the Afigirasim Ayana, the Aiigirasath Dviradtra, and many 
individual inventors of ceremonies who claimed to be Afgirases. 

The view of Hillebrandt 1 is that the Angirases were originally a family 
which was rather outside the main Vedic tradition, as shown by their lack of 
prominence in the books ii-ix, and which practised the cult of its ancestors, 
so that, when the Afgirases came into the Vedic tradition at all, they carried 
with them their ancestors as semi-divine. With this view may be compared 
that of Weber ? that we have in them Indo-Iranian priests. The alternative 
view ? is that they were originally regarded as a race of beings higher than 
men, and intermediate between them and the gods, as attendants of Agni who 
as Afgiras is the messenger * between the sky and the earth, the name being 
identic with the Greek ayyedos. The evidence is too slight to allow of any 
certain conclusion, except that the conception of Angiras in the historical 
period clearly generated a family, if there was not originally a family involved. 

The Viripas who occur in close connexion with the Afigirases are clearly 
merely a subdivision of that family : the eponymous Viripa also occurs. 

Other priests mentioned in conjunction with each other and usually allied 
either with the Afigirases or in the performance of the winning of the cows, 
which is the special deed of the Afigirases, are the Dacagvas and the Navagvas. 
The latter are the more often mentioned, and their name contains as first 
element the sacred number nine, so that the Dagagvas are probably a later 
invention. They seem to be a group of nine and ten priestly ancestors : 
possibly the second element in their name suggests, however, according to 
Bloomfield,® the idea that they are persons who win nine or ten cows apiece : 
usually, however, the latter part of the word is interpreted as from the root 
denoting to go, and the compound then means going in sets of nine or ten 
respectively, unless indeed Navagva is nuntius.® 

The Atharvans are mentioned in the Rigveda thrice only in the plural, and 
eleven times in the singular. The essential feature of Atharvan is that he 
produces Agni, to become the messenger of Vivasvant. He practised devotion 
along with Manu and Dadhyaiic, and was helped by Indra. According to the 
Atharvaveda,’ Atharvan brought to Indra a cup of Soma, received from 
Varuna a mystic cow, and dwells in heaven. The Atharvans as a family 
appear with the Afigirases, Navagvas, and Bhrgus and live in heaven, de- 
stroying goblins. In some passages the word certainly simply means priest as 


1 Ved. Myth. ii. 159 ff. the evidence. 

* Ind. Stud. i. 291 ff. 5 JAOS. xvi. p. exxv; AJP. xvii. 426. 

* Macdonell, Ved. Myth., p. 143. 6 Macdonell, Ved. Myth., p. 144. For 

* Louis H. Gray (JAOS. xlii. 332-4) treats astronomical theories, see Tilak, Arctic 
them as intermediaries or shamanists. Home in the Vedas, pp. 160 ff.; A. C. 
He sees in the late Bharadvaja Dhan- Das, Rig-Vedic India, i. 451 ff. Cf. Giin- 
vantari a priest in whom the cloud deity tert, Der arische Weltkénig, pp. 282 f. 


is embodied, but thisis to go far beyond 7 xviii. 3. 54; v.11; vii. 104; xi. 6. 13. 


Chap. 14] The Priests of the Fire Cult 225 


when Atharvans receive cows from Acvatha as gifts) and a Brhaddiva 
Atharvan ® seems to have been a real poet. In the ritual they appear to have 
used honey as real priests. Plants are described as connected with them in the 
Atharvaveda, as they are connected with the Afigirases, but the Atharvans 
seem clearly not to be connected with witchcraft and similar practices. The 
alternation of the compounds Atharvaigiras and Bhrgvaigiras points to their 
being closely related to the Bhrgus, but there is no adequate evidence for the 
theory of Hillebrandt * that the Bhrgus are the clan and Atharvan its priest. 

The word is probably, not certainly, to be identified with the Athravan of 
the Avesta, which must mean fire priest, the Avestan Atar being akin to athar- 
yu, flaming, used as an epithet of Agni. There is therefore every reason to see 
in the Atharvans the elevation to divine rank of fire priests of old time.* 

A special figure is that of Dadhyafic Atharvana, who is mentioned once in 
book vi, which is specially fond of the Atharvans, and elsewhere only in books 
i, ix, and x. The essential legend of him is that with the head of a horse he 
declared to the Acvins the mead.® Further, Indra is said to have found in 
Caryanavant the head of the horse hidden in the mountains, and to have slain 
ninety-nine Vrtras with the bones of Dadhyafic. He is the son of Atharvan 
and the kindler of fire, and he obtains cows from Indra, and opens cowstalls by 
Soma’s power. It is clearly difficult to make much of this figure ; the telling 
of the mead which is made into the delivery of philosophic doctrine by the theo- 
logians is interpreted more prosaically by Hillebrandt ® as referring to the 
use of honey in the ritual by the Atharvans, which seems clearly attested. But 
the horse-head suggests connexion with the steed Dadhikravan, and the name 
may either mean ‘ united with curd’ or ‘ turning towards curd in pleasure’, 
Bergaigne ’ considers that he is to be taken as the Soma, but this is hardly 
enough to account for his curious form and myth. It has been suggested that 
he is the lightning, the horse’s head indicating speed, the voice the thunder, 
and the bones the thunderbolts ; the connexion of lightning with Soma would 
explain the reference to Soma, to Indra, and to Agni. The suggestion is 
ingenious, but the mixed form of the deity suggests that there is at work some 
conception of demoniac kind: the demons of the Vedic religion often have 
the confusion of human and animal form, but not the deities. 

The Bhrgus occur but twenty-three times in all in the Rigveda, and despite 
the fact that they are marked with the Atharvans and Afgirases as Fathers, 
they show certain clear distinctions of character from the Angirases. While 
the latter are essentially active in the business of the finding of the cows, or aid 
Indra at least by their songs in it, the task of the Bhrgus is confined to the dis- 
covery of the fire, its lighting up, and its care. Moreover, in the Brahmana 


ERY. vi. 47. 24. TORY. ls Salo lane LLG lal cello 2a s 

PRV «x 120.9. 119. 9. 

5’ Ved. Myth. ii. 173 ff. 6 Ved. Myth. ii. 174. 

4 Bloomfield, SBE. xlii, p. xxiii, n. 2; 7 Rel. Wéd. ii. 456-60; Macdonell, Ved. 
Macdonell, Ved. Myth., p. 141. Cf. also Myth., pp. 142, 148. Cf. also JB. iii. 
JB. iii. 269. 64; JAOS. xviii. 17. 


15 [x.0.s. 31] 


226 » The Gods and Demons of the Veda (Part II 


literature the father of Bhrgu is Varuna,! while Afigiras is connected with 
Agni. They appear side by side with the Druhyus as apparently an historical 
people,? and possibly, when Bhrgu appears with the Yatis in a friendly 
relation to Indra, real facts may be alluded to.* On the other hand, they drive 
away a personage named Makha, of whom little or nothing else is known.* 
From MAatarievan, who shares with them the credit of establishing the fire, 
they differ, in that they do not fetch it down from the sky but diffuse the use 
on the earth. 

In the ritual there are clear references to real Bhargavas and to their 
practices as at the fire-piling and the mode of dividing the offerings: the 
Aitacdyana Ajaneyas in a curious story appeared as cursed by their father, 
and as therefore becoming the worst of the Bhrgus. 

The word Bhrgu clearly means shining, from the root bhrdj : it is therefore 
natural enough that there should be a considerable body of opinion in favour 
of the view that Bhrgu is originally the designation of the fire,> or more 
especially the lightning, and the Greek Phlegyai have been compared as fire 
priests.° The comparison is not certain ; it is, however, clear that the Bhrgus 
are mythical fire-priests, possibly, but not probably, the historic reminiscence 
of an actual family.’ 


§2. Other Ancient Priests 


Of other ancient seers the most famous are the Seven Seers, who are four 
times mentioned in the Rigveda.’ They are called divine fathers and secure 
Trasadasyu for Purukutsa’s wife in her dire need; possibly the number is 
merely the frequent mystic number seven, or again it may be derived from 
the seven priests of the ritual °—who again, however, may be due to the 
desire to make up the sacred number. Their names are not given before 
the Brahmanas. In the Catapatha! they are regarded as the seven stars in the 
constellation of the Great Bear, and are declared to have been in origin bears, 
a theory explained by the similarity of the words Rsi, seer, and Rksa, which 
means both star “ and bear.!? It is probably the same number who are the 
seven Hotrs with whom Manu made his first offering.1* A couple of divine 
Hotrs, who are mentioned about twelve times in the Rigveda,!* seem to be 
based on some pair of sacrificers in the ritual. 


1 AB. iii. 84.1; PB. xviii.9.1; JB.i.42;  ® Kuhn, Herabkunft des Feuers, pp. 21, 22; 


ii. 202. Weber, ZDMG. ix. 240 ff. ; Carnoy, Les 
ESI YV euvile LOO. : Indo-Européens, p. 207. 
3 RV. viii. 3.9; 6.18; cf. AV. v. 19.1; 7 Macdonell, Ved. Myth., pp. 100, 141. 
AB. ii. 20. 7. 8 iv. 42.8; x.109.4; 180. 7. 
4 RV.ix.101.18. Heisidentified withthe °* RV.ii. 1.2. Cf. iii. 7.7; iv. 1.12; vi. 
sacrifice in the Brahmanas ; Hopkins, es eis | Ke beet Os 
Trans. Conn. Acad. xv. 41 f. AT 12. 4 se xl. 8. 1. 102 JUBsiveco, as 
* Von Schroeder (Arische Religion, ii. 486) names in BAU. ii. 2.6; HGS.ii. 19.1. 
sees in the story of Bhrgu’s hauteurand "™ RV. i. 24. 10. 
his visit to hell a faint echo of the Pro- ™ RY. v. 56. 3. BORVe x, 68.07. 


metheus legend. “4 Oldenberg, SBE. xlvi. 11. 


Chap. 14] Other Ancient Priests 227 


Of individual seers Atri is the most famous, mainly through the myth of his 
being saved by Agni and by the A¢vins, who took him from a burning chasm, 
and refreshed him: once too they are said to have made him young again. 
The other legend attaching to him, or to the Atris, is the finding of the sun, 
when it was hidden by the demon Svarbhanu, and placing it again in the sky.! 
This legend is often mentioned in the Brahmanas and the Catapatha ? adds 
the detail that Atri originated from and is even identical with Vac. The 
Atris, besides claiming a share in their father’s exploit, are an historical reality, 
and the fifth book of the Rigveda is assigned by tradition to them, a tradition 
to a large extent borne out by the references in the work. With Atri, Sapta- 
vadhri seems to be identical: he is only named in immediate juxtaposition 
with Atri,? and the same rescue seems to be performed for him as for Atri. 

Atri probably denotes the devourer, from ad, ‘eat’, and indeed once 
occurs as an epithet of Agni,* whence Bergaigne ° has suggested that Atri is 
really in origin Agni himself. 

Kanva, whose descendants, the Kanvas, are the reputed authors of the 
poems of the eighth book of the Rigveda, is celebrated as an ancient seer, often 
in connexion with persons in whose existence we have no reason to disbelieve. 
He is, however, said to have had his sight restored by the Ag¢vins, and this, 
taken in conjunction with his connexion with the fire worship, has suggested 
the theory of Bergaigne ® that he is really the sun during the night, or more 
generally the hidden Agni, a suggestion for which there is nothing to be 
said. On the other hand, it is probable that Kanva was merely an eponymous 
hero : nothing said of him seems to prove contemporaneity with any Rigvedic 
poet.?, Medhyatithi and Priyamedha, who are among the descendants of 
Kanva, seem to have been real personages. Of the other seers, to whom the 
various books of the Rigveda are assigned, Gotama, Vicvamitra, Vamadeva, 
Bharadvaja, and Vasistha, there is still less reason to disbelieve the historic 
existence, or at least the existence of the families bearing the names from 
which the ancestors may have been reconstructed.® 

A more mysterious appearance belongs to Kavya U¢anaé, whose main 
characteristic is wisdom : Soma is compared with and identified with him on 
this ground. He appears as a protégé of Indra and associated with him when 
with Kutsa he vanquished Cusna: he also forged his bolt for Indra, and 
is said to have established Agni as Hotr priest. He appears, however, in the 
Paficavinea Brahmana as the Purohita of the Asuras, and has been compared 
with the famous Iranian figure of saga, Kai Kaés.° 


2 RY. v. 40. 6, 8; AV. viii. 2. 4, 12, 86. * Op. cit. 11. 465. 


Biv. 5.4. 21.5 1.4. 5.18 : xiv.5.2.5, 7 Oldenberg, ZDMG. xlii. 216, 217. 

* RV. x. 39.9; v. 78.5, 6; viii.78. 8,9; ° CGS. ii. 14. 2 invents a Bharadvaja 
Bergaigne, Rel. Véd. ii. 467. Dhanvantari, but AGS. i. 2.2; 3. 6; 

* RV. ii. 8. 5. 12. 7 has Dhanvantari alone. 

5 Op. cit. ii. 467-72. Cf. Max Miiller, ° PB. vii. 5. 20; Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. 
Beitr. zu einer wiss. Myth. ii. 155, 162. iii, 442. 


15* 


228 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


§ 3. Warriors 


Of the warriors who are mentioned as having been engaged in battles and 
aided by the gods, we have absolutely no reason to assign the majority to any 
but the world of past reality. Historic reminiscence and poetic imagination 
are sufficient to account for what is said about them, just as the same factors 
together with aetiological myths explain adequately the legends of the priest 
of old days. To seek in any of them gods is erroneous :} treated as history, 
it is perfectly possible to make good sense out of the history of Sudas, and even 
of the older and more mystic Divodasa Atithigva.? With Sudas Vicvamitra 
and Vasistha stand in the closest relation : we have a poem which tradition 
places in the mouth of Vi¢vamitra extolling the rivers Vipa¢ and Cutudri for 
giving an easy crossing to his master’s hosts,* and another hymn recounts with 
jeers at the expense of Vicvamitra ‘ the failure of the great coalition which he 
had brought against his former master, and the success of the army of Sudas 
through the help of Vasistha. 

The other heroes are of less consequence except Kutsa,° who is important 
for the part played by him in connexion with Indra. In order to assist Kutsa 
to overthrow Cusna, Indra tore off one wheel of the sun, and gave the other to 
him to drive on with. The mythic element seems merely to be the introduction 
of this deed of Indra; as Indra defeated for him Smadibha, Tugra, and the 
Vetasus, and on the other hand defeats for Tirvayana Kutsa, Ayu, and 
Atithigva, it seems most probable that Kutsa is a real enough prince. Ber- 
gaigne ® sees in him, as too often, a figure of Agni, and the Naighantuka ” 
includes his name among the synonyms of the thunderbolt. 


§4. The First of Men 


In the Rigveda there can be no doubt as to who is the real first man : it is 
Manu or Manus, whose name, cognate perhaps with the Gothic manna, and 
the root man, ‘ think’, appears as a definite forefather of men nearly forty 
times in the Rigveda. He is essentially the first of sacrificers, and the estab- 
lisher of sacrifice, though he appears with other old sacrificers also, Afigiras, 
Bhrgu, Atharvan, Dadhyafic, Atri, and Kanva. The gods, Mataricvan, 
or Kavya Ucana, are said to have given Agni to Manu.’ Again it is the three 
lakes of the Soma of Manus that Indra drinks to strengthen himself for the 
fight with Vrtra. A bird brings Soma to Manu. In the Brahmanas he con- 


* Gruppe, Griech. Culte, i. 298 ff.; Olden- ‘ RV. vii. 18; Oldenberg, ZDMG. xii. 


berg, Rel. des Veda*, pp. 287, 288; cf. 203 ff.; Oertel, JAOS. xviii. 47, 48 ; 

Leaf, Homer and History, chap.i. ; Far- Hopkins, JAOS. xv. 260 ff. 

nell, Greek Hero Culis. 5 Bergaigne, Rel. Véd. ii. 3833-8 ; Oldenberg, 
* For all the following see Macdonell and ZDMG. xlii. 211; Hillebrandt, Ved. 

Keith, Vedic Indea, s.vv. Myth. iii. 284-938. 


3 RV. iii. 83; cf. 58; Hillebrandt, Fest- ° Loc. cit. 
gruss an Boehtlingk, p. 403; Geldner, 7 ii. 20. 
Ved. Stud, ii. 158 f. § RV.i. 36.10; 128.2; viii. 28.17. 


Chap. 14] The First of Men 229 


stantly appears as connected with the sacrifice, and the dictum is laid down 
that, whatever Manu said, was medicine, a fact which accounts in part for the 
tradition which makes him the great legal authority of India. 

Of the legends of Manu ! the most important is that of the deluge, of which 
he is warned by a fish, and which he escapes through the agency of the fish, 
which carries his ship about until it rests on a mountain peak, in post-Vedic 
mythology called Naubandhana.”? The fish in the epic becomes Brahman, and 
in the Puranas the full legend of the Avatar of Visnu is recounted. Thereafter 
Manu with his daughter Ida, the personification of the sacrificial food, pro- 
duces the human race. The legend may be alluded to in a very late book of the 
Atharvaveda,? but its late appearance, at a time when the Naksatras had pro- 
bably been borrowed from a Semitic source, renders the theory of its inde- 
pendent Indian and even Indo-European origin, defended by Lindner,* 
rather dubious, though not impossible. 

Another story connects him with the law of the division of property. 
Nabhanedistha was deprived by his brothers of a fair share in the patri- 
monial heritage, which they divided up, when he was keeping his period of 
studentship. Manu, however, enables the young man to console himself by 
obtaining, in place of his share in the heritage, a boon from the Adityas, after 
he has appeased Rudra who appears on the place of sacrifice to claim all the 
cattle which had been left by the sacrificers as a fee for Nabhanedistha.° 

It seems that Manu was already in the Rigveda considered to be the son 
of Vivasvant, whose name he actually bears in one case.® In the later texts 
he is quite regularly called son of Vivasvant.’ He is accordingly a brother 
of Yama, or a duplication of that personage, but Manu unlike Yama is con- 
cerned with the living, and Yama with the dead: hence in the Catapatha 
Brahmana ® the difficulty is reconciled by making Manu the ruler of men, 
Yama of the dead. Ydaska,°® relying on an obscure passage of the Rigveda, 
finds in him the son of Vivasvant, and the savarnd who was substituted for 
Saranya, when that lady left her husband,?° and in the Rigveda ™ we actually 
hear of Manu Saémvarani, whose epithet may be either a mistake for Savarni 
which would point to a very early date for the legend, or may have been mis- 
understood and have created the legend. 

The alternative connexion of the origin of man is from the union of the pair 


A. C. Das, Rig-Vedic India, i. 221 f. 
5 AB. v. 14. 
6 RV. viii. 52. 1. 
7 AV. viii. 10. 24; CB. xiii. 4. 3. 3. 
8 xili. 4. 3. 3-5. 


1 Rhys (Celtic Heathendom, pp. 377, 659 ff.) 
believes in Manu’s identity with Taci- 
tus’s Mannus, ancestor of the Germans, 
the Celtic Manann, and Greek Minos, 
and holds the theory of an Aryan deluge. 


2 CB3i. 8.1: 1-10. SNPs dice O; 

prxix, ov. O. ZOOS Vier Xen iaeh os 

* Festgruss an Roth, pp. 2138-16; Max " RV. viii. 51. 1; cf. Scheftelowitz, Die 
Miiller, India, pp. 133-8; Hopkins, Apokryphen des Rgveda, p. 38, with 


Rel. of India, p. 160; above, Part I, 
Chap. 2. Fora rational explanation, see 


Oldenberg, GGA. 1907, p. 237. 


230 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


Yama and Yami, an idea which is found also in the Avesta ; } in an interesting 
dialogue of the tenth book of the Rigveda, Yami is represented as having to 
persuade Yama that their wedlock is desirable and right against his doubts. 
Yama, however, is so intimately connected with the dead that further treat- 
ment of him can best be deferred to the discussion of Vedic eschatology. By 
a quite different order of ideas the four castes are elsewhere deemed to be 
derived from the body of the giant offered in sacrifice by the gods.’ 


1 RV. x. 10; see below, Part V, Chap. 26. PB. vi. 1. 6-18; JB. i. 68 f., &c. See 
* RV. x. 903 AV. xix. 6; TS. vil 1. 174-6; below, Appendix B. 


CHAPTER 15 
THE DEMONS 
$1. The Enemies of the Gods 


THE enemies of the gods par excellence throughout the Yajurveda, the 
Atharvaveda, and all the subsequent Vedic literature are beings called Asuras, 
but this connexion can be traced only in the latest parts of the Rigveda and 
even there but occasionally. In the singular the meaning is found but three 
times certainly, used of Varcin,! Pipru,? and the wolfish Asura ;* a fourth 
case is very doubtful, and may instead refer to Varuna.* In the plural there 
are at most eight cases, predominantly in the tenth book: in them the gods 
as a body appear opposed to the Asuras as in the later texts, or Indra scatters 
them.® The term Asura is applied also to Namuci, and to Svarbhanu, while 
Indra, Agni, and the sun are called slayers of Asuras. In the Atharvaveda,® 
on the other hand, the singular is used in the hostile sense three times, the 
plural thirty times, and the application of the term to the gods, which is found 
very occasionally in the later literature,’ is confronted with a regular applica- 
tion to the enemies of the gods. In the Rigveda, on the contrary, it is the 
normal attribute of Varuna and, more rarely, of other high gods. 

The theory of Haug ® that the change of meaning of Asura as between 
Asura in India and Ahura Mazdah in Iran was due to a divergence in religion 
in the Indo-Iranian people, which ended in the schism of the two nations, is 
hopelessly opposed to the fact that the change of meaning takes place in 
India itself, and, since Darmesteter,® the theory has prevailed that the change 
by which Asura became the name of demons in India, while in Iran the Devas 
became demons, is an internal change of meaning in the two languages, 
brought about by causes which can be made more or less clear. In the case 
of India the development of Asura into a hostile sense is traced to its use in 
connexion with the word Maya, ‘ wile ’ 1° or ‘ occult power ’, assisted by the 


1 RV. vii. 99. 5. 1466 ff.; Ludwig, Rigveda, iv. pp. 

SERV Xa) LOO... xvii f. 

7 RV. 11. 80. 4. ® Ormazd et Ahriman, pp. 266 ff. ; Geldner, 

4 RV. x. 124. Ved. Stud. i. 142. 

5 RV. viii. 96.9; 97.1; x. 157.4; 53.4; 3° Hillebrandt, VOJ. xiii. 320. The deriva- 
82.5; 124.5 (dubious); 151.3; Asura, tion from mi, * injure ’(Geldner, Glossar 
v. 40. 5,9; x. 181. 4; Asurahan, vi. zum RV., p.135), is clearly wrong ; it is 
22. 4; vii. 18. 1; x. 180. 2. Cf. Mac from md, ‘ fashion’, RV. v. 85. 5; i. 
donell, JRAS. xxvii. 168-77. 159. 4; 111.38. 7; ix. 83.3; cf. Neisser, 

® Von Bradke, Dydus Asura, pp. 101 fi. Festschrift Hillebrandt, pp. 144 ff. ; 

7 Ludwig, Rigveda, iv. p. xvii; TS. i. 6. 6. Schayer, Mahayan. Erlésungslehre, pp. 


Criticized by Justi, GGA. 1866, pp. 22 f. 


232 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 
popular derivation which saw a negative in the first letter of the word, and 
vaguely conceived the meaning as ‘ not heavenly ’, this view leading to the 
creation of the term sura for god in the Upanisads, and perhaps also by the 
absence of any collective name for the enemies of the gods proper. The 
change of Deva was by Darmesteter attributed to the misunderstanding under 
the régime of Zoroaster of the old phrases ‘ wrath of gods and men’, and 
‘trouble made by gods or men’, but this argument is of very problematic 
value indeed. ‘ 

Hillebrandt ! has recently opposed the prevalent doctrine, and asserted 
the opinion that the difference of view is due to religious relations with the 
early Iranians before the reform of Zoroaster, but after the period of the 
Rigveda in its main portions. He points out that the real cleavage in view is 
considerable: that the fall of the Nasatya, Indra, Vata, and Carva to be 
demons ‘as Naonhaithya, Indra, Vato, and Cauru (Saurva) is significant ; 
that the Vedic Kavis and the U¢ij family of priests fellin rank ; and that there 
is no trace of the gradual change of sense, which would be expected, if the 
prevailing view were correct. He also points to the fact that among the names 
of Asuras, who appear in the accounts of the Brahmanas, there are some with 
an Iranian aspect: namely Canda and Marka, the latter being Avestan 
Mahrka,? Kavya Ucana, who is comparable with Kai Kaos, Prahrida Kaya- 
dhava,® perhaps Avestan Kayadha, and Srma,’* Iranian Salm, son of Thraé- 
taona. The evidence is, however, clearly inadequate to prove the thesis, and 
the efforts of Hillebrandt to show that in the Rigveda occur names of Persian 
princes who patronized the singers, a fact which would indicate the possibility 
of close intercourse during the late Rigveda period natural, must be definitely 
taken to have failed to produce conviction.® 

Another suggestion is made by von Schroeder,® based on von Bradke’s 
view * of the term Asura, as applied to the gods, as meaning not ‘ spirit ’ as 
usually held, but ‘master’ or ‘lord’, and cognate with Latin erus. The 
name would thus normally have applied specifically to Dyaus, as the great sky 
god, or rather the god created by the moral sense of men, and also regarded as 
a nature deity, but as usual with the Vedic poets would have been extended 


1 Ved. Myth. iii. 480 ff. ; cf. Moulton, Early are in evil odour he connects with the 


Zoroastrianism, pp. 115, 140; von kalpa of the Vedic priests. 

Bradke, Dydus Asura, pp.108f. Greek * TB.i. 5.9.1. SeMSSiVirae Oe 
influence for Vedic times (V. Smith, ° Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Indez, i. 29, 
JASB. 1889, p. 183; 1892, p. 60) is 3849, 450, 509, 518; ii. 68. Jackson 


implausible. 


2 TS. iv.4.10.1; MS.iv.6.3; CB. iv. 2.1. 


16. Hillebrandt treats him as Death; 
these demons receive the Cukra and 
Manthin cups at the Agnistoma, in- 
vented by the gods to rid themselves of 
them, and the Manthin cup brings dis- 
ease. Candikasin RV. ii. 30.8 are foes 
of Indra. The Avestan Karapans who 


(CHI. i. 319 ff.) adds nothing new to 
Hillebrandt’s conjectures. It is note- 
worthy that Bloomfield’s evidence (Rig- 
Veda Repetitions, p. 645) shows book vi 
as by no means early as it should be if 
it deals with events in Iran before the 
invasion of India. 


8 Arische Religion, i. 317 ff. 
* Dydus Asura, pp. 29 ff. 


Chap. 15] The Enemies of the Gods 233 


by henotheism to other gods, such as Varuna, Parjanya, Indra, Agni, and 
Savitr. The degradation of such a term seems unlikely, and accordingly 
von Schroeder believes that there originally existed two distinct words, 
asura, ‘lord’, and asura, ‘ spirit’. In India the latter use prevailed, and the 
older or contemporaneous asura, ‘lord’, was given up, because perhaps of 
risk of confusion with the other term, while the Iranians retained the use of 
Ahura as ‘ master’. This suggestion is ingenious, but purely hypothetical, and 
hardly necessary to explain the facts. Moreover, the idea that aswra as 
‘ spirit ’ is naturally applied to evil beings is decidedly fantastic. The precise 
sense which asura had in the minds of those who used it is unknown to us, but 
there is nothing to show that it had any connexion with the worship of the 
spirits of the dead, as frequently suggested.t_ On the contrary, even from its 
possible connexion with asu, ‘ breath ’, the word may rather have meant that 
which is essentially alive and possessed of power and strength.? 

The view of these personages taken by the Brahmanas is that they are 
equally sons of Prajapati, though born of a less worthy part of the god, from 
the descending breath, not the mouth, and that they are in constant conflict 
with the gods, and have to be defeated by some ritual performances. They 
are associated with the darkness, untruth, and error, as opposed to the gods. 
The term ‘ pertaining to the Asuras ’ is freely given to any ritual performance 
which the priests do not approve. Thus the Asuras are said to have only a 
morning and afternoon pressing,’ not three as the Vedic Indians, a point which 
has some affinity to the Avesta, and the mode of making the grave differs.* 
We have one fairly clear proof that Aryan enemies are included, for the 
Catapatha Brahmana°® has preserved to us two barbarous (mleccha) words 
used by the Asuras, he ‘lavo, which, despite various efforts to interpret them 
as Assyrian or something equally implausible, seem merely a Prakritic version 
of the Vedic he ’rayah, ‘O enemies’, pointing to an eastern dialect as in 
Magadhi. 

Among names of Asuras we learn of Kiradta and Akuli,® Araru (with which 
may be compared the Arurmaghas or Aruiimaghas, foes of Indra), Aru, Kusta,’ 
in opposition to Aditi, Etadu, from the use of etad u in a formula, Daivya as 
their messenger as opposed to Agni, Dabhi as the address of the Gayatri 


+ Thus Moulton (Karly Zoroastrianism, p. of the gods and conduct. 
150; Early Rel. Poetry of Persia, pp. * Cf. Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda*, p. 160, 
34 ff.) argues that the high Ahura wor- n. 2. On the whole, the sense ‘ lord’ 
ship comes from ancestor worship as seems adequate for Veda and Avesta 
contrasted with the inferior worship of alike. On the Gaulish Esus, see Rhys, 
Daévas, nature deities. But he himself Celtic Heathendom, pp. 60 ff. 


(Early Zoroastrianism, pp. ix, 344, &c.) * TS. vi. 2.5.3. 
renders Ahura by‘ lord’, whichdisposes ‘ QB, xiii. 8. 2. 1. 
of any connexion with ancestor worship. ° iii. 2. 1. 23, 24; Macdonell and Keith, 


Varuna sufficiently refutes for India and op. cit. ii. 181, 279, 517. 
Ahura for Iran Schroeder’s doctrine * PB. xiii. 12.5; CB.i. 1. 4. 16; JB. iii. 
that morality and ancestor worship are 168 ff. 


more closely related than the worship 7 MS. iv. 2. 3. 


234 The Gods and Demons of the Veda (Part 11 


metre,! in place of Vievakarman, Asita Dhanva, their king,? Piru, the name 
of a Vedic prince, Vibhinduka and Visad. More important are the Kala- 
kafijas,?> who figure in a story similar to that of Otos and Ephialtes, the 
bricks of the altar taking the place of mountains. 

In comparison with the Asuras the Panis are unimportant demons, who 
play no great part in the literature after the Rigveda. They are the demons 
who withhold the cows, or, as it is differently put, the ghee in the cow, from 
Indra or his allies, Agni, Brhaspati, the Afigirases or Soma, and are over- 
thrown by him. The word is normally plural, but a single Pani four times 
represents the group. The most probable explanation * is undoubtedly that 
which sees in the Panis the personification of the enemy, who will not sacrifice 
to the gods or bestow gifts on the priests, and who is therefore an enemy of 
the gods and men alike, and has been brought into the old myth of the winning 
of the light in cow shape. Hillebrandt ° seeks to show that the Panis are 
an historical tribe, comparing the name Parnians, but the suggestion is most 
improbable. 

The Dasas or Dasyus are also made into enemies of the gods, though, like 
the Panis, their primitive function was doubtless different ; in their case it 
probably was that of aborigines, who opposed the Aryan advance, though 
Hillebrandt * changes them into Dahae. That in many cases historic men may 
be meant when Dasas are overthrown, is true; but gods of the defeated 
aborigines may also be denoted, and more generally powers of the air opposed 
to the gods : Dasyus seek to scale heaven,’ Indra vanquishes them from birth,® 
he wins the sun and waters after defeating them,® a Dasa is husband of the 
waters,!® and the Dasas have seven autumnal forts, doubtless in the air, not 
on the steppes. 

Of the individual names of the enemies of the gods Vrtra ranks first ; he is 
a serpent with power over the lightning, mist, hail, and thunder, when he wars 
with Indra; his mother is Danu, apparently the stream or the waters of 
heaven, but he bears that name himself as well as Danava, offspring of Danu. 
His abode is hidden in the waters, but is also on a summit or on lofty heights, 
which suggest the waters of the air. He is by name the encompasser of the 
waters, rather than the holder back by congealing them : the cloud mountain 
is, therefore, said to be within his belly. He has ninety-nine forts which Indra 
shatters as he slays him. From the single Vrtra the Vedic conception, as often, 
produces many Vrtras, and we find also the plural used of foes who must 
be clearly human, perhaps, however, never without a sub-reference to Vrtra, 
though, as the neuter is used in this way, it may be that the use is not simply 
a direct generalization of Vrtra asa demon. The Brahmanas, which tell many 
LTS. i. das MSoHe odd, ® Op. cit. i. 95; (KI. Ausg.), pp. 96 f. 

* CB .xile 4. Gilt. 7 RV. viii. 14. 14; 1. 33. 7. 
’ 'TB.i.1.2.4-6; Eggeling, SBE. xii.286. * RV.i. 51.63 viii. 77. 1-3. 
4 Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda?, p. 148; Mac- *® RV.i. 100.18; x. 73. 5. 

donell, Ved. Myih., p. 157. tC Vieloee lt be 

5 Ved. Myth. i. 83 ff.; ZDMG. Ixx. 512 ff. 


Chap. 15] The Enemies of the Gods 235 


tales about Vrtra,! make him out to be the moon, swallowed at new moon by 
Indra as the sun. 

Vala is a pale figure compared to Vrtra : he is mentioned in the myth of the 
Panis: Brhaspati or Indra takes from him the cows which he had in his forts, 
his fences are burst by Indra, or his hole is opened. The word means literally 
covering, and is found often in this sense or in some cognate meaning. The 
fold of Vala is also mentioned, and he is clearly simply the personification 
of the pen in which the cows are supposed to be kept, as is indicated by the 
fact that he is not said to be slain, but to be pierced, broken, or cloven. In the 
post-Vedic mythology he appears in the epithet of Indra, ‘ piercer of Vala’, 
and is deemed brother of Vrtra, with whose myth, however, he had, it is clear, 
little originally to do.? 

Arbuda appears seven times as a beast whose head Indra struck off: he 
seems to be cognate to Vrtra with whom or Ahi he is mentioned.* Svarbhanu,* 
the Asura, is more interesting : he is clearly the demon who eclipses the sun, 
and who has to be overthrown by Atri or the Atris, and by Indra. Though he 
is several times mentioned in the Brahmanas, his place is in post-Vedic 
mythology regularly taken by Rahu. The Atharvaveda® also knows of 
Grahas who affect the moon. Of Urana who had ninety-nine arms we know 
no more.® But we hear a good deal of Vicvaripa, the three-headed son of 
Tvastr, slain by Trita and by Indra for the sake of his cows, and who in the 
Brahmanas’ appears as the Purohita of the gods, though akin to the Asuras. 
Tvastr, it is said, sought to punish Indra for the death of his son, but his effort 
to exclude him from the Soma sacrifice was defeated by Indra, who insisted 
on taking a share in it. The legend tells also of the origin of three birds from 
the three heads of the demon, as they were struck off by Indra, and explains 
the use of each of the three heads for drinking respectively the Soma, the 
Sura, and taking other forms of nourishment. To Hillebrandt ° the moon 
seems to be meant by this form, and he lays just stress on the fact that the 
Brahmanas are aware of the hostile character of the moon, which they often 
equate with Vrtra, and which seems once regarded in a hostile light in the 
Rigveda; but this view cannot be regarded as probable as that which insists 
on the identity of the legend with those of Herakles and Geryoneus and 
Hercules and Cacus.!° 


1 Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 239ff. Use- priest Arbuda Kadraveya, CB. xiii. 4. 
ner (Gétternamen, p. 206) finds the 8. 9. 
Danaoi in the Danava as demons, de- ‘* RV.v.60; Rahu occurs in AV. xix. 9.10, 
spite the change of quantity. Implau- a late passage. 


sible is the viewthat Vrtrais acreation ° Loc. cit. 

of the imagination, urtrahan, as in the ° RV. ii. 14. 4. 

Avesta Verethraghna, denoting‘ assault 7 TS. ii. 5. 1. 1. For the three heads, cf. 

repelling ’ (Bartholomae, Air.Wb. 1420). Hopkins, Origin of Religion, pp. 297 ff. 
* Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth, iii. 260-6. CBA. Gi sal tiastVveos Ane sel Mallets bo. 1. 
* RV. ii. 11. 20; 14. 4; i. 51.6; viii. 3. * Ved. Myth. iii. 531 ff. 

19; 32.2; x. 67. 12. Cf. the snake 7° Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, p. 142, n. 6. 


236 The Gods and Demons of the Veda (Part II 


Of the Dasa enemies of Indra the chief is Cambara, the son of Kulitara,* 
who had 90, 99, or 100 forts and was the great foe of Divodasa Atithigva. His 
historical reality seems reasonably assumed.” Pipru is styled a wild beast, an 
Asura, and a Dasa, and is defeated for the sake of Rji¢van : it seems unneces- 
sary to see in him a spirit of the air.* Dhuni, the roarer, and Cumuri, whose 
name is not connected with any known root, are apparently chiefs defeated 
for Dabhiti. Varcin is both Asura and Dasa, but his 1,100 or 100,000 4 
warriors do not seem wholly mythical, and the names Anarcani, Ilibi¢a, 
Drbhika, Rudhikra, and Srbinda, which are those of other foes, seem human 
enough. On the other hand, Namuci, as we have seen, seems to be a demon, 
and Cusna has been explained not as a human enemy of Kutsa, but as a demon 
of drought from his name interpreted as scorcher.> But this seems unlikely : 
he is child of the mist and moves in the water and a Danava; if, therefore, 
he is a demon, he is rather the hisser, for Vrtra’s hissing drove Indra away in 
fear, and this applies to other enemies than drought demons. 


§2. The Enemies of Man 


It is impossible, when we deal with the lesser demons of the Vedic religion, — 
to ascertain with any reasonable certainty the origin of the different concep- 
tions exhibited, for the lack of clearness of the notices given in our sources is 
in accordance with the fact that the demons are objects of aversion, and that 
therefore they are not minutely described, but only indicated in vague terms. 
It is probably true that in many cases the idea of such spirits is born of the 
idea of the hostile dead,® or again the demons are the product of independent 
creative thought, corresponding to the ‘ abstract ’ deities, but they may also 
often be more naturalistic in their origin. It must be remembered that there 
are poisonous plants, that waters are often regarded as cruel and dangerous 
as well as kindly, as in the widespread belief that a river must be propitiated 
by the life of man at least once a year, that the savage character of the forest 
creates the view that it is inhabited by a dread spirit, that the hail is regarded 
as evil, and that trees are awe-inspiring * and sometimes deadly in their fruits. 
The animatistic growth of such ideas as that of hostile spirits is as natural as 
the animistic, or the spiritist, but in the case of the demons the distinctions 
cannot be made with certainty in the confused figures which we find in the 
literature. Nor in the case of the demons can we overlook the fact that actual 
men may be included as well as spirits of the dead, and actual animals also 
be considered a very natural fact. 


1 In this name Brunnhofer (Arische Urzeit, ‘ RV.ii. 14.6; iv. 30.15. 
pp.71, 72) finds as usual an ethnic refer- ° Macdonell, op. cit., p. 160. 


ence without any conceivable ground. ° As in Babylonian religion, Farnell, Greece 
* He considered himself a godling, RV. vii. and Babylon, p. 206. Cf. Arbman, 
18. 20. Rudra, p. 169. 


% Macdonell, Ved. Myth., p. 161. * Cf. Hopkins, Epic Myth., p. 7, n. 3. 


Chap. 15] The Enemies of Man 237 


The forms of the demons are conceived either anthropomorphically or 
theriomorphically, or, and this is a distinction between them and the gods, as 
compounded of both forms. They are enumerated in groups, but the distinc- 
tions between the groups are not carefully drawn, and in addition we have 
many names of individuals, derived from their activity or appearance, or 
fancy names, or names perhaps of real enemies. 

The Raksases are the most famous of the classes of demons, and occur in 
the Rigveda upwards of fifty times, nearly always in connexion with the 
mention of a god who is desired to deal with them. In two hymns! the 
Raksases seem to be more precisely defined as Yatus or Yatudhanas, words 
which denote wizard or sorcerers, and the latter may be regarded as a sub- 
division of the Raksasas, a fact of the utmost importance as showing how 
important even in the Rigveda was the belief in such beings, many of them 
probably real men. The Raksases are often, as is natural, theriomorphic ; 
they appear as dogs, vultures, owls, and other birds flying about at night ; 2 
they can assume the form of husband, brother, or lover, and they are a con- 
stant peril to the woman in child. In dog or ape form they are ready to 
attack her ; * at the wedding service they prowl around, and small staves are 
flung in the air to pierce the eyes of the demons.> When they have human 
forms, they are often hideously deformed, with two mouths, three heads, 
four eyes, five feet, with feet turned backwards, without fingers, or with horns 
on their hands, and bear-necked.® Blue, yellow, and green are their colours, 
and they are not without social organization, having both families and kings :7 
unlike the gods, they are mortal, and have not won immortality.’ They are 
essentially blood-suckers who seek to enter men, especially by the mouth in 
the process of eating and drinking, but also by other inferior passages which 
the gods are therefore besought to protect.? When within they eat the man’s 
or beast’s flesh and cause disease ; 1° they bring about madness and destroy 
the power of speech ; 1! they invade human dwellings 1? and dance around 
houses in the evening; they make a noise in the forest, pray aloud, or laugh and 
drink out of skulls as cups,!* a point which shows that the ghouls of the places 
of burial must have contributed an element to the conceptions: in such 
spirits the idea of the spirits of the dead, especially the dead not duly buried or 
burnt, and the spirits, which are, like Vastospati in the house, resident in the 
place of the dead, must inevitably inextricably combine. 

Like most evil spirits, the Raksases love the night, especially the night 
when there is no moon, for in the east the sun disperses them, and in this 


RV oevile LOLs xX. Sis) Ind. 115,266 9°. AV.-vi; 32.2. 


Rksa appears in the sense of Raksas. * AV. v. 29. 6-8 ; vill. 6. 3. 
2 RV. vii. 104. 18, 22. 10 RV. x. 87s 16, 173 vill.’ 60: (20's. AV. vil. 
* RV. x. 162. 5. 76. 4. 
SAV AAVe St. 11, CAV; Visilsd,. 3 = HGS, ini ou5. 
5 MGS. i. 4. 10. 12 Kaug. cxxxv. 9. 


_ 


® AV. viii. 6; HGS. ii. 3. 7. > AV. viii. 6. 10, 11, 14; HGS. ii. 3. 7. 
7 AV. v. 22.12; HGS. ii. 3. 7. 1 RV. vii. 104. 18. 


238 The Gods and Demons of the Veda (Part II 


connexion with night they are akin to the souls of the dead. Hence, it seems, 
a falling meteor ! is considered to be the embodiment of a Raksas. 

As is natural in a priestly collection, we hear much of the attacks of the 
Raksases on the sacrifice: with the Yatus they taint it and throw it into 
confusion.2, On the other hand, the sorcerer can use a spell, and by the 
Raksases and the Yatudhanas ruin the sacrifice of his enemy. In order to 
obtain the advantage of sacrifices, the evil spirits often assume the form of 
souls of ancestors and come to the offerings for the dead. But the demons can 
be yoked by a skilled man to his own ends; in the Atharvaveda we find that 
demons are invited to attack the man who sends them, and the later texts 
recognize the need of providing against the attacks of sorcerers.® In these 
eases and for the protection of the offering the essential aider is Agni, the 
burner, who therefore represents the primitive and universal belief in the 
power of fire to repel hostile demons. An isolated mention is made of Kubera 
Vaicravana as their king. 

The meaning of the term is doubtful: the root ‘ protect ’ is the obvious 
one, in which case the word must apparently mean that which is to be 
guarded against, unless we suppose that they are given a good-sounding name, 
in order to make them good. In the sense ‘ injure’ , there is little authority for 
raks. Bergaigne® thinks that they are named as guardians of celestial 
treasure, who being greedy are hated, for which view the parallel of the 
Gandharvas and the Soma may be cited, as well as the fact that Kubera is 
their king. Bartholomae connects Raksas with the root seen in Greek 
epex Get. 

The Pigacas are only once mentioned in the Rigveda,’ where Indra is 
invoked to crush the yellow-peaked, watery, Picaci and every Raksas. In the 
later Sambhitas they figure, however, in the plural, and they are opposed to 
the Fathers, as the Asuras to the gods, and the Raksases to men, but not con- 
sistently.2 They may, however, have been supposed to be specially of the 
ethnic type of theriomorphic ghouls of the dead, as they have the name 
kravydd, ‘ eaters of raw flesh’. But they also are treated as eating away the 
flesh of a sick man, while again they appear as infesting human dwellings and 
villages, and even as will-o’-the-wisps.1° The view that these Picadcas are 
really, or originally, a special tribe who were addicted to cannibalism, and who 
were the speakers of the Prakrit known to the grammarians as Paicaci, has 
been put forward of late, but has no probability, the reverse process being 
much more likely. Similarly, the idea that the Raksases are originally con- 
ceived as hostile aborigines cannot be accepted as explaining the class 


1 Kauc. cxxvi. 9. S Rel. Véd. ii. 218. 
* RV. vii. 104. 18, 21; x. 182. 8. Ps UBS pla 
* AV. vii. 70. 2. STS. 11. Sesks Le 


4 AV. xviii. 2. 28 ; Caland, Altind. Ahnen- PTA VEIN Lee uu: 
kult, pp. 3 ff. ° AV. iv. 36.8; 20.9; 37.10. 
® RV. vi. 62.9; vii. 104. 28; viii. 82.20; ™ Grierson, ZDMG. Ixvi. 68. 
AV U2 b oils secon ee 


~ 


Chap. 15] The Enemies of Man 239 


generally, but merely as one element in the conception.! Charpentier ? finds 
in the Picacas the souls of the dead conceived as glow-worms. The Brahmanas* 
tell a curious tale of a Picaci who married the Iksvaku King, Tryaruna, and 
dulled his fire, until the priest Vrea by a rite had her burned up. 

The Aratis, who occur about a dozen times in the Rigveda and frequently 
later, are clearly abstract deities of illiberality, but clothed with quite a real 
life in the imagination of the indignant Vedic poet, who asks the gods to 
overthrow them. The Druhs are found about as often in the Rigveda,* but 
they are Indo-Iranian, the Avestan being druj, and, like all the older concep- 
tions, are not living features of the religion, being merely vaguely conceived 
as injurious spirits. The Kimidins as a pair of demons occur already in the 
Rigveda,® contrary to the more normal practice of grouping the demons in 
sets, perhaps owing to the influence of the dual deities. The names which we 
have of such Kimidins, Mroka and Anumroka, Sarpa and Anusarpa, show, 
however, their entire distinction from the dual deities which have distinct 
personalities and quite different appellations.® 

Among the homes of these spirits, especially probably those of the dead, 
one is especially noteworthy, the cross way, which is the scene of various 
magic rites. It is there that evil spirits and disease are banished by the 
sorcerer; there is performed the spell to find what has been lost, there 
Rudra is said to dwell, after a death the fire which becomes thus impure is 
deposited there.” It is doubtful what motive in each case can be seen for the 
superstition which is world-wide : unquestionably the spirits of the dead are 
thought to live there, especially perhaps evil spirits, as evil dead are often so 
buried, but it is possible to find other motives: the cross-roads is the place 
whence all ways deviate, so that it is the proper centre for a spell to seek 
for what is lost: or again by depositing there what is impure, the idea may 
be that the impurity is induced to go one way, the former owner of it another, 
or the evil which is laid aside may enter into and be taken away by one of the 
many wayfarers who pass that way. 

One set of demons seems still to show its essential connexion with a natural 
object, those which are conceived as embodied in plants. Agni and Indra are 
implored to destroy the demons together with the root,’ and the point, or 
three points, of demons is alluded to: it is natural to assume that the root is 
the incorporation of the deity, and this view is strengthened by the reference ® 
to those ‘ whose god is the root ’, an expression which surely denotes that the 


1 Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Indea, ii. 516. ° RV. vii. 104.23; x. 87. 24; Weber, Ind. 


* Kleine Beitrdége zur indoiranischen Mytho- Stud. xiii. 183 ff. 
logie (1911). But see Winternitz, VOJ. ° AV. ii. 24. 
XXvii. 229-32. 7 Kauc. xxvi. 30; xxvii. 7; xxx. 18; lii. 
> PB. xiii. 3. 11-18; JB. iii. 94-6; Sieg, 14; CB. ii. 6.2.7 ; HGS.i. 16.8 ; AGS. 
Die Sagenstoffe des RV., p. 64; Oertel, iv. 6.3; Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, 
JAOS. xviii. 21 ff.; Oldenberg on RV. pp. 269 f. 
Warden Ne ® RV. iii. 80.17 5 x. 87.019. 


* Macdonell, Ved. Myth., p. 8. ® RV. vii. 104. 24; x. 87. 2, 14. 


240 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


root was the actual demon, rather than merely that the demon was supposed to 
have taken up his abode ! in the root, though the former conception might 
easily be passing into the latter. 

In the case of the disease demons it is not easy precisely to determine what 
conception was formed of them. The idea formed of them certainly hovers 
between the conception of a spirit like Takman, ‘fever’, who brings the 
disease, and a more materialistic, or scientific, conception of some substance 
which carries the disease itself. The constant efforts to drive out diseases by 
means of spells and sympathetic magic may, according to Oldenberg, fairly be 
held to contain a more advanced conception of the nature of disease than the 
more simple concept of a demon disease. But this is not at all clear, unless we 
accept Oldenberg’s animistic views. The real question is whether the demon 
disease was conceived in the first place abstractly, the disease being caused by 
a demon, and the demon identified with the disease it caused, or whether the 
disease was conceived as something real and material, with a life of its own. 
The latter view seems to accord most with primitive thought, and with the 
material, if less personal, character of the disease as attacked by the means of 
the sorcerer in the Atharvaveda, in which, however, constant hints of the 
personal character are still to be found. The actual signs of the disease, the 
symptoms visible to the eye, are in the primitive mind the disease itself, 
which is, as the symptoms come and go, clearly a living entity. 

The demons are not, however, merely repelled by the use of fire, and by 
many spells ; they are actually occasionally propitiated with offerings, as in 
the case of the Raksases and Yatudhanas who are thus treated in the Taittiriya 
Brahmana,? a fact which may stand in relation with the use which sorcerers 
were able to make of these spirits. Tricks are also tried to deceive them : 
thus in the period * of continence immediately after marriage, there has been 
seen by Oldenberg * an ingenious device to prevent any hostile action on the 
part of the demons, whether by attacking the bride or seeking to enjoy her,® 
and in any case the sympathetic magic of the device is obvious. The practice 
in the acts of driving away fiends of enumerating as many names as possible is 
parallel to that of enumerating as many gods in the offerings of the Vai¢vadeva 
rite in the domestic ritual, and it has preserved to us several lists. To protect 
the woman in child-birth a fire is lighted,® and the spirits are banned under the 
names of Canda and Marka, Upavira, Caundikeya, Ulikhala, Malimluca, 
Drondsa, Cyavana, Alikhant, Animisa, Kimnvadanta, Upacruti, Haryaksa, 
Kumbhin,-Catru, Patrapani, Nrmani, Hantrimukha, Sarsaparuna, Cyavana. 


1 Oldenberg, op. cit., p. 268, n. 4; the Epos, pp. 235 f. 
natural origin of such spiritsis seenin ‘ Rel. des Veda’, p. 2738. 
Celtic religion ; MacCulloch, Rel.of Anc. * AV. iv. 37.11; CB. iii. 2.1.10. 
Celts, pp. 173, 185; cf. Farnell, Greece ¢* PGS. i. 16. 28; ApGS. xviii. 1; MP. ii. 


and Babylon, pp. 110, 111, 43. 16. 1 ff. A longer list in HGS. ii. 3. 7; 
a 5 1 Pramr¢ant, Kiitadanta, Vikleca, Lam- 
% Winternitz, Altind. Hochzeitsrituell, p. 87 ; bastana, Uraspeca, &c. 


J. J. Meyer, Das Weib im altindischen 


Chap. 15] The Enemies of Man 241 


Still more interesting is the treatment of a child which has a barking cough ; ! 
the demon within him is exorcized to let loose the child, being addressed as 
Kirkura, good Kirkura, and doggy ; he is assured that Sarama is his mother, 
Sisara his father, and the brindled dogs of Yama his brothers : the idea of the 
demon cough in dog form is perfectly clear : its name is also given as Kumara. 
When the man performs the Vai¢gvadeva offerings of the domestic ritual, his 
wife outside the house offers food * to the man, to the woman, to every age, 
to the white one with black teeth, the lord of bad women, to those who allure 
her children, whether in the wood or the forest. On the day of the final bath 
the pupil banishes from him all the evil forms of Agni, ten in number, which he 
enumerates. Demons figure among those to whom he is given in charge 
by the teacher on his reception.* In the ritual we find in the Taittiriya 
Aranyaka® a list of hideous forms to be driven away from the offering, 
Vicirsni, Grdhracirsni, and so on. The sacrifice is full of all sorts of magic 
devices to repel the evil spirits, who, on the one hand, are allowed to have 
offerings of the blood, though only with inaudible words of offering lest the 
speech of the speaker should become the voice of a Raksas,* but on the other 
hand are kept off by the use of the enclosing sticks, by the free employment of 
fire, by the drawing of magic circles, and by the sound of the pressing stones.’ 

The great gods of the Vedic period are not reduced to demons, nor do they 
approximate to them : it is true that their names are invoked in very trivial 
oecasions such as that of Indra in an idiotic spell to induce a slave not to 
run away from his master,® or to secure connexion,’ but that merely denotes 
that the gods were familiar enough to their votaries not to despise aiding them 
in all their actions. Hillebrandt 1° indeed sees in some passages thé tendency to 
reduce Rudra to the rank of little more than a demon, but, while Rudra is 
a terrible god and is in some ways akin to the demons, the evidence adduced by 
Hillebrandt is not altogether in point. Rudra is to be addressed when a man 
is on a path, at cross-roads, crossing a river, at a mountain, a forest, a burial- 
ground and a stable, but the fact that he is so to be invoked is expressly 
explained by his omnipresence,!! and we have here not so much a primitive 
idea as the extension to every sphere of activity of the great god Rudra, the 
sign of an advanced theistic view of the god rather than a degradation of his 
nature. More kinship to legends of demons is to be seen in such a legend as 
that of Indra becoming a horse’s tail ; #* the gods are able to change form at 


1 PGS. i. 16. 24. 77 PGoiel2 tae 9 EGSae 9a. 

* PGS. ii. 6. 10. ‘ HGS-i. 6. 5. 10 Ved. Myth. iii. 425. 

a3. 28. SvABaweia le 1 PGS. iii. 15. 7 ff.; HGS. i. 16. 8 ff. ; 

ivi. 11. 6. 6,25 RV. x. 86. 4; CB. ‘vii. AGS. iv. 8.40; MP.i. 13.8; ApGS. ix. 
Wail eee se eADOm. Xie) Lis G6.) ATaru 1s) & 3; Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda*, pp. 220 ff. 
demon banned from the place of sacri- Arbman’s objections (Rudra, pp. 222 ff.) 
MCE Sale Lond tM tet ent Os Tye ks are irrelevant. 
10; VS. i. 26; TB. iii. 2.9. 4; pos- % Geldner, Ved. Stud, ii. 183; perhaps an 
sibly in RV. x. 9.9, 10. ant, RV. i. 51. 9; Hillebrandt, op. cit. 

Serins. ii. 7.8. ioe by p-Ae ee 


16 [x.0.s. 31] 


242 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part IL 


will, a fact of which Indra makes free use in his amourettes, but it is rarely 
that they adopt anything but a noble form such as the eagle form of Indra, but 
that god has a tendency to assume popular traits. Kubera, later the god of 
wealth, is a Raksas and lord of robbers and evil-doers in the Catapatha 
Brahmana ;! in the Sitras 2 he is invoked with Icana for the husband in the 
marriage ritual, and his hosts plague children. Comparison*® with Greek 
Kabeiros and explanation as a mountain spirit of hiding propensities are most 
doubtful. 

A certain interest attaches to the very late Nejamesa, who appears 
apparently as banned in the ritual of the parting of the hair of the bride,* 
for he reappears in the form of Naigamesa in the medical work of Sucruta, 
and as Nemesa in a Mathura inscription.> It is dubious whether the name is 
found in the epic, though possibly the Naigameya there recorded may be an 
error for it.® 

In the somewhat late Manava Grhya Sittra’? we have a rite prescribed for 
one who suffers from possession by the Vinayakas, Calakatanikata, Kisman- 
darajaputra, Usmita and Devayajana, in which a strange variety of deities are 
invoked, Vimukha, Cyena, Baka, Yaksa, Kalaha, Bhiru, Vinéyaka, Ktiisman- 
darajaputra, Yajnaviksepin, Kulaigapamdarin, Yaipake¢in, Stparakrodin, 
Haimavata, Jambhaka, Viripaksa, Lohitaksa, Vaicravana, Mahasena, 
Mahadeva, Maharaja. Mahadeva is doubtless Rudra, Mahasena appears 
elsewhere § as a disease demon and is an epithet of Skanda, Vaicravana is 
Kubera. In Yajfiavalkya ® we find a single Vinayaka, who is here son of the 
goddess Ambika, and appointed by Brahman and Rudra to be the overlord 
of the Ganas, troupes, perhaps akin to those assigned to Rudra’s entourage 
in the Yajurveda.!? Doubtless we have here something akin to the later 
Ganega, who is not Vedic, but it is by no means certain that we are to interpret 
Vinayaka as denoting ‘ leader’, instead of ‘ remover of obstacles’, or the 
epithet Vighneca, which later is found applied to Ganega, as lord of Vighnas, 
conceived as destroyers. The term Yaksa,! which occurs in this list, is far 
better known in the Buddhist form of Yakkha; we find the term applied to 
a wondrous thing in the Jaiminiya Brahmana; 1° the Rsis seek to behold 
something of this kind, and Indra reveals to them the tortoise Akiipara, of 
boundless dimension, who is clearly the cosmic tortoise who finds the earth in 
the ocean. The specification of the term to mean a species of spirit, usually 
associated with Kubera, is not found until the period of the Grhya Sitras. 


1 xiii. 4. 8,10; cf. AV. viii. 10. 28. contra, Winternitz, JRAS. 1898, p. 383. 
§- CGS.1.1 14,7 470HGSiel Bo 7. 8 PGS. i. 16. 24 is cited by Arbman, but 
3’ Hopkins, JAOS. xxxi. 55-70. wrongly. Skanda appears in BhGS. 
4 (GS. i. 22.7; AGS. i. 14, 3. 9's AV. Par xx) BG, Paras co 
6 Biihler, EI. ii. 316; Winternitz, JRAS. ° i. 271 ff. 10 TS. iv. 5.4. 
1895, pp. 149 ff.; Hillebrandt, Ved. ' Jacobi, ERE. ti. 807. 
Myth. iii. 424. 2 Boyer, JA. 1906,i.393 ff.; Oldenberg, RV. 
6 Hopkins, Epic Myth., pp. 103, 227, 229. ii. ff. ; Hopkins, Epic Myth., pp. 30 f. 


7 ii, 14; Arbman, Rudra .pp. 57 f. 219 ff. 13 iii, 2038, 272. 


CHAPTER 16 
THE GODS AND THEIR WORSHIPPERS 


As men fashion their concepts of their gods in accordance with their own ; 
attitude towards life, it is natural to find in the Rigveda the expression of the 
real religious spirit of the day. It must, however, be borne in mind in any 
estimate of that spirit that the sources are all priestly, and that, therefore, 
they express the views not so much of the ordinary man even of the higher 
ranks, and social distinctions certainly existed then, but of the priest himself, 
and of a priesthood which had already advanced a long way in the direction of 
the elaboration and definition of religion. This fact, however, while it explains 
much that is to be found in the thought of the Rigveda, and warns us against 
imputing that thought to a simple people living in immediate contact with 
nature and the birth of the gods, does not alter the impression which is 
unquestionably made by the Rigveda as a whole, and which is of a definite 
and intelligible character. 

The Indians of the Rigveda, from even the comparatively scanty traces of , 
their ordinary activities to be gathered from that collection, were essentially 
an active, energetic, warrior people, engaged indeed in struggles with the 
aborigines, and even among themselves, but in the main prosperous, and con- 
tented with their life. The tone of the great gods reflects, therefore, the 
character of the people, and in no case better than in that of Indra. Indra 
is the victorious warrior : he is also the jovial and human god: he is a great 
drinker, a mighty eater, and the poets do not scorn to tell how he drank over 
much and required skilled tendance as the result. He is hot-tempered, as 
befits a god who wars ever with demons : there are signs of a qnarrel with the 
gods, of interference with Strya, of an onslaught even on Usas, and, worst of 
all, of killing his father for the sake of the Soma. But the presence of such 
traits is only incidental and occasional : they cannot have formed any serious 
element in his character, save in so far as they gave rise to the feeling which is 
frankly expressed in one hymn,! that Indra is changeable, that he is in- 
constant in his friendships, that he makes the first last at pleasure, and that 
he is angry with the man who has wealth. We must be careful not to over- 
estimate the force of such remarks: the wealthy against whom the god is 
wroth are the Panis, who withhold treasures from men and gods alike: we 
have nothing of Herodotos’s doctrine of the jealousy of heaven. But it must 
be owned that Indra by these traits seems to have created misbelief, for we 
find here and there firm assertions in his divinity, which is proved when he 


1 RV. vi. 47. 15-17, 
16* 


244 The Gods and Demons of the Veda | (Part II 


manifests his great deeds and which refutes the sayings of men who deny 
Indra’s existence. Of no other god have we any such doubt expressed in the 
Rigveda.! In the main, however, Indra is a kind and generous friend to his 
votaries, and the Rigveda does not seem to know the legend which makes him 
seduce Ahalya by assuming as a disguise the form of her husband, a per- 
formance more in accord with the ways of demons than of a great god. 

The position of the other gods is essentially similar to that of Indra; on 
the one hand, most of them are not so near to men in feeling and have less 
human life in their natures, but at the same time they are free from the less 
creditable aspects which belong to Indra. Agni is in special closeness to the 
worshipper, as he is the guest who dwells in the house, and, therefore, a very 
present friend, but his close relation to the element renders his personality 
less clear than that of Indra, and so places a difficulty in the way of the 
generation of deeper human relations. His parentage of men is hardly marked: 
he is rather the prototype, as Angiras, of the priest, and the great god of the 
priests. The only exception to the general rule is Rudra, and in a minor degree 
the Maruts, his companions.? Rudra is emphatically a terrible god: the 
ritual exhibits this characteristic in the constant assimilation of his character 
to that of the dead and the demons, and in the prayers this fact is clearly 
shown by the efforts ever made to induce him to spare the worshipper, his 
wife, his children, his horses, his cattle, to keep his weapons afar from him, and 
to be merciful. The wrath of the god is evidently easily awakened whether by 
prayer wrongly offered or obtruded upon him when busy otherwise,’ or merely 
spontaneously and without good cause : the complaint of Indra’s inconstancy 
is quite different from the uneasy feeling of terror inspired in his votaries by 
Rudra: they had no doubt at all of his reality or his deadly powers. Of the 
other gods a hint or two of hostility is mentioned, but merely in the vaguest 
way, the gods themselves are once or twice—perhaps by assimilation to the 
Asuras—deemed hostile,* but in an overwhelming number of cases we hear 
of the gods as good and true and generous to their worshippers. 

That the gods are kind to their worshippers is supplemented by the asser- 
tion that they do not deceive and are true, doubtless in the main an assertion 
that the gods send the blessings which they are asked to give, and for which 

offerings are bestowed on them. But it is an essential distinction between the 
religion of the Veda and many other religions, not merely Semitic, that there 
is no great stress laid on the moral quality of the gods, and that the sense 
of sin is only very feebly represented in the hymns: the moral aspect of the 
Rigveda is practically confined to the case of the gods Varuna, the Adityas, and 
Aditi herself, and it is doubtless from these gods that here and there other gods 
assume the aspect of punishers and remitters of sin. Moreover, despite the 
stress which is laid on the position of these gods, the Rigveda itself, and in far 


1 RV. ii. 12. 5.; viii. 108; Deussen, Gesch. 3? RV. ii. 338. 4. 
der Phil. 1. i. 96 ff. * The Avestan Daévas are of course demons. 
* Bergaigne, Rel. Véd. iii, 154. Cf. AV. iii. 15.5; TS. iii. 5.4. 1. 


Chap. 16] The Gods and their Worshippers 245 


greater degree the Atharvaveda, present us with a much simpler conception , 


of sin, which assimilates it to a disease. Sin is something which sticks to a 
man, which confers a taint upon him as a disease does, and it is to be fought 
against in the same way as a disease : it may be banished by spells, water may 
wash it out, fire may purify it ; it has precisely the same remedies as a disease, 
and is as external as a disease itself. The sinner has no consciousness of 
any more sin than would be produced by a disease. The hieratic poetry 
of the Rigveda cannot be said to take normally this view of the case, but it is 
obviously in itself the more popular view, and the Atharvaveda here certainly 
reflects the feelings of those classes to whom the high gods, the doctrine of 
consciousness of sin, and the forgiveness of sin were far away. 

The physical nature of sin accounts for the fact that it can be conferred by 
others without any act of human volition on the part of him whom it attacks ; 
the bird of Nirrti bearing the infection can pass it upon men :! when the sin 
of the slaying of a Brahman falls on Indra he successively manages to pass it 
off on a series of other kinds of beings. The gods wipe sin off on Trita and he 
on men.” The victim at the sacrifice by its lowing or tearing the ground with 
its feet creates a sin which passes on to those around.? The wailing of the 
women at the house of the dead produces by itself a sin. Sin is brought upon 
men by others, and even by the gods: * it is inherited from the father or 
other relative and made by one self.6 But this process of transfer has an 
obvious advantage : even as man may be affected by sin without action of his 
own, so he can transfer sin or even a good deed 7 to others, and so get rid not 
merely of sins which have been passed on to him, but also of sins which he 
himself has committed. The absence of the element of consciousness explains 


also why it is possible for sins to be committed even in sleep.’ There is no: 


essential distinction when the sin is spoken of as a fetter: the fetters of death, | 


the fetters of sickness, or the fetters of Nirrti seem to convey no more meaning | 
than the natural comparison of the constraint, which is put on man by sin in | 
its physical aspect, with the fetters imposed by man for a civil crime, although | 
the use of such metaphors must have aided the growth of the idea that the | 


fetters are imposed by a god, as when the gods are besought not to catch men 
as in a net.® 

There is clear proof that the feeling of sin in many cases did not exist : 
the poets freely confess to lies, to failure to keep promises, to treachery, to 
other forms of sin, and by magic means or by prayers to the gods, mingled 
with magic, seek to divest themselves of the sin, just as they seek in the same 
way torid themselves of a disease: !° the sense of guilt is still external, and 


1 AV. vii. 64. JSR, Et Korey Oe 

Pel. i. 15 40S. 7 RV. vii. 35. 4. 

4 AV. xiv. 2. 59, 60. SRV. x2 164.03 So Vio. Villas axel G. 

PER Valine. Osa VistOLs dismal ooe ae) VOW) et Veils 29205) Clatt 27. . Os aA Vel Mel LO. 6:2 
iii. 48; viii. 18; (CB. iv. 4. 5. 22; viii. 8. 16. 
Bris Oia0. MOOR li.2d.) Leite Ode Ose We Via, 11D * 


6 RV. vii. 86.5; AV. v. 80.4; vi. 116.3; Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda*, pp. 297 f. 


246 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


suggests that we must connect it in thought with such things as the blood of 
the clansman in murder : it is in such instances that we may see the growth of 
the conception of the substance which as sin clings to a man, an idea which 
must have been aided by the conception that a disease is some such substance. 
The intervention of a god like Agni in such a case is merely to be compared 
with his intervention in the case of a disease: a deadly substance affects the 
man, and must be removed from him : it is not a case of searching of heart and 
forgiveness accorded to the contrite soul by heaven. 

It is by no means certain exactly in what way the conception of the con- 


/nexion of Varuna with sin sprang into such prominence, if we assume, as we 
/must in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that the conception of sin as 
| punished by Varuna is an Aryan one, and not a conception borrowed from a 


Semitic race. It is possible that the point of contact lay in the fact that the 
disease of dropsy by its accumulation of fluid suggested the action of the 
god who is always connected with the waters: there seems every reason to 
suppose that the connexion of the god and that disease is as early as anything 
else in this regard. If, thereforé, the disease became associated with the 
action of the god, it may have been an easy step to evolve the view that the 
disease was a punishment for sin, for the idea of Varuna as the overseer of 
moral order may have been produced at a comparatively early date from the 
kindred conception that the order of the universe is particularly his care. 
This moral character of Varuna is expressed repeatedly in the most emphatic 
manner.! Mitra and he are barriers furnished with many fetters against false- 
hood, his fetters are cast threefold and sevenfold, snaring the man who tells 
lies, he is a dispeller, hater, and punisher of falsehood, and afflicts with disease 
those who are sinful. But, on the other hand, stress is laid also on the mercy 
of the god: he releases from sins committed by men and by their fathers also : 
the prayer of men who day by day trangress his ordinances, through thought- 
lessness and through the sinful nature of man, is efficacious to secure forgive- 
ness. The poet in one hymn? represents in an effective and interesting way 
the feeling of the sinner, who approaches the god in full consciousness that he 
or his fathers has sinned against him, but who urges as excuse lack of thought, 
passion, and other causes, wine, dice, anger, slumber, and begs for forgiveness 
and to be set free from the fetters in which he is bound. It is, of course, 
possible to exaggerate the moral character of this confession of sin: the poet 
is not a prophet, and he takes his position with a calm which is not expressive 
of any deep movement of repentance or consciousness of sin,* but the attitude 
is clearly moral; the punishment is admitted to be just, repentance is ex- 
pressed, and the god is asked to forgive. In another hymn,‘ perhaps of the 


* Varuna is essentially connected with Rta, * RV. vii. 86. To assert that the sin here 


whereas Indra with Satya; his great confessed is a ritual erroris wholly with- 
might is true, while his fierce nature is out justification. 

less in accord with Rta; Bergaigne, * The fact that the sin may be of one’s 
Rel. Véd. iii. 249 ; Oldenberg, GN. 1915, ancestors or committed in sleep is sig- 


p. 175. nificant. * RV. vii. 88. 


Chap. 16] The Gods and their Worshippers 247 


same authorship, we have a striking expression ; the poet reflects on his former 
companionship with the god, when Varuna and he sailed on a ship together in 
Varuna’s heaven, and the god made him to be a seer ; if he has sinned against 
the god, still as his true friend he begs for forgiveness. In yet another ! the 
sinner presents himself as tottering along, blown out like an inflated skin, athirst 
in the midst of the waters, and begs pardon for the sins he has committed 
whether from lack of thought or feebleness of will. Elsewhere the sinner ad- 
mits violating day by day the laws of Varuna or of the gods.?_ Passages such 
as these, with admission of sin committed, must be put beside the emphati¢ 
assertion of the omniscience of Varuna which is found in a hymn of the 
Atharvaveda,® and which asserts that he is present everywhere ; when two 
men are together Varuna is present as third : he numbers the winkings of the 
eyes of men: if a man should flee far beyond the heavens, yet he would not 
be free from Varuna who has a thousand spies, and who knows all things. 
There should also be added the emphasis which is laid on the conception of 
Rta as moral and not merely a physical or a sacrificial law of order: when 
Yami urges Yama ‘ to marry her despite the guilt of incest which thus would 
arise, he replies that the action is contrary to Rta, which is thus conceived as 
a firm and abiding principle binding on man. 

In the light of this exalted conception of Varuna which seems clearly \ 
normal in the Rigveda, and which of course corresponds with the majestic | 
figure of Ahura in the Avesta, though far inferior to the conception, it is | 
easy to understand the references which are occasionally made to the spirits — 
of deceit ® which serve him and execute his ordinances, and his deceit ® from 
which Agni is asked to save the worshipper. In this connexion also is the 
Maya, magic power, of Varuna spoken of. The view of Geldner ’? that Asura 
is thus reduced to something no better than the normal demon is erroneous : 
it rests on the mistaken view that the Maya is something in itself bad, and that 
deceit is never justifiable. But the term Maya has in itself no bad sense, and, 
though Varuna is an elevated figure, it must be recognized that the Vedic 
Indian saw nothing wrong in the use of deceit against the wicked : how else 
indeed would the deceitful be destroyed save by superior cunning ? It is just 
to recognize this limitation on Indian ethics, but not to exaggerate its nature 
or significance. 

It must be admitted that the figure of Varuna does not increase in moral) 
value in the course of the development of Vedic religion: in the fact of the 
failure of morality to develop itself as an important factor in the nature of the 
gods lies a deep distinction between Indian and other religions. Varuna is: 
remembered as the god who has fetters and becomes in the Brahmanas a 


1 RV. vii. 89. ing Brahmans, falsehood. 

MUR Viol, 20a b 5 Xe ae a PRV sie 2552 3 2857 sixecousevile GL. oO, 
3 AV. iv. 16. give his various punishments of men. 

« RV. x. 10. 4. Cf. vii. 104. 14, anrtadeva, * RV.ii. 27.16; i. 128. 7. 


perhaps a false dicer; TB.i. 7. 2.6, 7 Ved. Stud. i. 142. 
anrta is stealing from a sister, oppress- 


248 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part IT 


dread god, whose ritual in some measure is assimilated to that of the demons 
and the dead. After the performance of the bath, which ends the Agnistoma 
sacrifice, the performer turns away and does not look back to escape from 
Varuna’s notice,! and in the ceremony of that bath, when performed after the 
horse sacrifice, a man of a peculiar appearance is driven into the water and an 
offering made on his head, as being a representative of Varuna :? this form of 
‘the expulsion of evils, which is a common idea throughout the world, shows 
Varuna reduced to a somewhat humble level, and degraded from his Rigvedic 
‘eminence. In the Varunapraghasas, the second of the four-month feasts, 
which is one concerning him in the main, the wife of the sacrificer is made to 
declare her lovers if any, and if she does so she is made formally free from 
guilt in respect of them, but here there is no trace of an exalted moral 
conception.* 

Of the other gods Aditi and the Adityas share with Mitra in the attributes 
of Varuna as a matter of course. The position is different with the rest : here 
and there an odd reference to forgiving sin and even to punishing sinners is of 
little or no consequence. In the case of Agni, however, these characteristics 
are more marked, as is natural in the god who is essentially the god of the 
house, and therefore a friend of men. Moreover, his position as the messenger 
between earth and heaven fits him for the role of acting as a go-between in 
propitiating the wrath of Varuna: as we have seen, he is even implored to 
avert the deceit of Varuna. With Indra the position is different :* it is true 
that he is asked to forgive sins and that he punishes the evil man, the liar, and 
the haughty, but these are merely characteristics which the most popular of 
gods must borrow from Varuna in a religion so fond of syncretism as that of 
the Rigveda, and the dependent position of Indra in this regard is sufficiently 
seen by the fact that he vindicates the ordinances of Mitra and Varuna,’ not his 
own, and, when invoked with these gods, is asked for the material, not for the 
spiritual, blessings which they grant. 

The ethical terminology of the Rigveda presents points of interest. The 
term for cosmic order,’ Rta, and its opposite, Anrta, express also moral order 
as in the dialogue of Yama and Yami; Rta forbids and doubtless also com- 
mands positive action. Rta is more than truth, Satya, nor can we say with 
Wundt ® that Vedic India makes the good and the true identical, though truth 
is given an extraordinary high place, in its various senses of accuracy of state- 
ment, faithful performance of promises, and the assurance that what should 


1 TS. vi. 6.3.5; MS. iv. 8. 5. PR EUV Sy x28 9.00. 

2 ApCS. xiii. 19. 1 ff. ° Bergaigne, Rel. Véd. iii. 210 ff. ; Olden- 

% Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. iii. 27. A some- berg, Weltanschauung der Bradhmana- 
what cynical morality is indicated by texte, pp. 186 ff. 
the rites to encourage a wife’s lovers ‘* Oldenberg, GN. 1915, pp. 167 ff.; contra, 
in BhGS. ii. 28 ; ApGS. xxiii. 4, which Liiders, SBA. 1910, p. 931; Andreas 
is unsuccessfully referred to the levi- and Wackernagel, GN. 1911, p. 28. 
rate by the comm. on BhGS. § RV. x. 10.4; iv. 28. 8. 


* Bergaigne, Rel. Véd. iii. 200 ff. ® Ethik', i. 24. 





Chap. 16] The Gods and their Worshippers 249 


happen will happen, and that the order of things is as it ought to be. Law is 
denoted by Dharman,! which denotes that which supports and that which is 
supported ; it applies like Rta to all aspects of the world, to the sequence of 
events in nature, to the sacrifice and to man’s life; ‘The gods by the sacrifice 
offered the sacrifice ; these were the first ordinances ’, says the Purusa hymn ; 
it is according to Dharman that the sacrificial flame is enkindled, that the pious 
man duly propagates himself with offspring. Law is also expressed by Vrata,? 
a term which has been compared with verbum in Latin and word in English, 
and which in any case denotes often the command or law of a deity ; thus on 
Varuna the laws rest firmly as on a rock, and the gods make the abiding laws ; 
under the law of Indra are Varuna and the sun, the streams obey his laws ; 
before Parjanya’s law the earth bows; the pious man lives righteously accord- 
ing tothe law. The term can be applied more widely ;? under the law of the 
king the rich man prospers ; the bridegroom brings the heart of the bride under 
his command. A development gives the term the sense of the rule of life or of 
ritual conduct which men observe, originally as commanded; thus we hear of 
the Vrata of the carpenter, doctor, priest, or smith, or of the Brahmans 
who keep their year-long Vrata.4 Sin, Agas or Enas, as we have seen, is the lot 
of him who violates the Vratas of the gods. 

The term for individual goods is, as in the Avesta, Vasu, which is used 
repeatedly of every conceivable sort of desired object. Cri again denotes 
primarily what is beautiful, to the primitive taste, that is something possessing 
show and brilliance, but even in the Rigveda it tends to designate the pomp of 
the man of high position.®> Papa ° is the term for evil, for it is used of the man 
who commits incest, but it also applies to mere poverty ; the god is besought 
to be generous and not to abandon his worshipper to evil days, Papatva ; 
it is opposed to Bhadra in one of those contrasts which are regular in the 
Rigveda and later. 

Despite the importance which legitimately attaches to it, the moral 
element in the Rigveda and the subsequent literature is of comparatively 

/small extent, and the vast majority of the Vedic hymns are not concerned in 
the remotest degree with questions of morals. The chief requirement for 
‘man, in the opinion of the poets, is not that he should be good or be conscious 
of sin and attain forgiveness, but that he should have faith in the gods and 
pay them their honours due, nor should he fail in so doing to remember his 
obligation towards the priest, who alone can rightly perform the sacrifice for 
‘him and create the hymn of praise. The personification of Faith is a very 
essential thing in the eyes of the priest :7 it is Faith which makes a man 
believe in the existence of such a god as Indra, and which makes him appre- 


1 RV. i. 164. 50; x. 90. 16; iii. 17.1; vi. ° Oldenberg, GN. 1918, pp. 85 ff. 


70. 3. SRV axa LOL La cel veouo sn vileenls. 
2 RV. ii. 28.8; i.86.5; x.65.11; 1.101. 7 RV.ii.12.5;3 1.55.1; vii.82.14; x.151.1; 
Be VuaSsoa Ds) 1156.0. AV. Vis 133d sa VSs Saxe ies ells Gu5): 
- RY. x. 60.4; PGS.1. 8. 8. Hil 2aoe 


fix. 112 5 vil. 108. 


250 The Gods and Demons of the Veda [Part II 


ciate the need of sacrifice to Indra and of generosity to the priests. Faith 
becomes a very real goddess in the Rigveda: she receives formal obligations 
and is exhalted by a priesthood, who had her to thank for their daily food. 
The priests soon realized that the patron must be induced to realize that he 
gained something from his offerings which must have gravely reduced his 
possessions : they promise the offerer long life for his gifts;1 they assure 
him that what the god—and his priest—takes does not in any wise diminish 
his goods, an idea found in the latest as well as the earliest ? literature, they 
promise immortality to the giver of gold, the sun to givers of horses.2 No 
exaltation is too high for Faith: it is through her that Naciketas in the 
Katha Upanisad insists on his father giving him to death, when his father 
offered a sacrifice of all he had, but yet did not propose to include his son in it. 
On the other hand a poet‘ makes clear the causal nexus of life in the sequence, 
Faith, Consecration for Sacrifice, the Sacrifice, the Sacrificial Fee: all that is 
lacking is the eternal life in the world to come, which is the share of the sacri- 
ficer. A technical term, Istapirta, denotes the merit won by offering and gifts 
to the priest a distant precursor of the later Karman: in the funeral hymn ® 
the dead man is bidden to unite himself with the Fathers, with the fruit of 
his offerings and gifts ; the gods are bidden to unite him with his Istapirta, 
when he has attained their abode,® and it is declared that the liberal giver? 
is he who gazes on the third step of Visnu set in the sky : no more clear way of 
attaining heaven has often been offered to man. But it must be remembered 
that the man must be rich: the true sacrificer is he who gives all his wealth to 
the priest as the fee, or who at least gives, like Kaurama among the Rucamas,® 
a hundred jewels, ten chaplets, three hundred horses, and ten thousand cattle. 
In return for this generosity the sacrificer, however, gets something, which in 
the eyes of the priest doubtless seemed worth more than even immortality, 
the glory of mention of his generosity in a Vedic hymn. ° 

The later Vedic age ® appreciated these praises of liberality, Danastutis, 
and celebrations of the fame of men, Gatha Naracansi, at their true worth 
when they treated them as lies and placed the makers in the same rank as 
drunkards, but to the Vedic poet they doubtless shared the glory of his poetry. 
The poets of the Rigveda took themselves in all seriousness: they called 
themselves inspired, and believed in their high powers of workmanship : 
they repeatedly extol the value of their new and beautiful songs, which sur- 
passthose of others. To Indra they can say unashamed?°‘ We have wishes; 
you have gifts ; here are we with our songs ’, and expect that the god will see 
that the exchange is fair. The same spirit is shown in the elaboration of the 


aT AV s Vile LOS. Ls 8 AV. xx. 127. But giving all is censured, 
ORV Vie 28s 2k PB. xvi. 5. 6; 6. 1; 9. 2; Hopkins, 
SHA Veexe LOT ees Trans. Conn. Acad. xv. 31. 

SAV SXVs01 Ge ® Bloomfield, Atharvaveda, p. 100; Rel. of 
BARN Xela. Veda, pp. 196 ff. 

SOT SAV ape ele ae ORV. Vill. 216. 


ere Viadeicas 20. 





Chap. 16] The Gods and their Worshippers 251 


poems themselves, in the efforts by bold imagery and even by elaborate metre 
to produce perfect works of art. The poem is compared to a well-wrought 
chariot, it is likened to winnowed grain, to ghee well purified. It became in 
itself a divinity as Dhi, ‘ holy devotion ’, Sustuti, ‘lovely praise’, and Manisa, 
‘holy thought ’. In its expression of admiration of the gods, it is the highest 
product of the worship of the priests, the most attractive outcome of their 
religious consciousness, relieving and giving value to a cult which is of over- 
whelming tedium and complication. 

It must, however, be admitted that this pride of creation was unhappily 
united with the feeling of rivalry: the gods are not conceived as able to be 
present at every offering at one and the same moment: they are too like to 
man to have true omniscience and therefore the sacrificers may compete. It 
is natural enough to find this idea in the late texts, where we hear often of 
competing of sacrifices, and devices to undo the ill results of the mingling of 
sacrificial fires with one another, or the interference of one invocation with 
another. But it is somewhat of a shock to find that these views are expressed 
in the earliest hymns preserved to us, that the Vasisthas complacently plume 
themselves on having induced Indra to prefer their oblations of the Soma to 
those of Pagadyumna Vayata, though the latter had gone to the trouble of 
recalling the god from far away.! It is a lower and more vulgar thought 
which pictures Kutsa tying Indra ? up to keep him beside him, and the god 
being induced by Luca to extricate himself from his shameful bondage, 
but the conception is the same, and it is an essential part of the Vedic concep- 
tion of the deity. . B 
* Bloomfield, Rel. of Veda, p. 186; RV. vii. this in RV. x. 38. 5, see below Part 


33. 2. III, Chap. 18, § 2. 
* PB. ix. 2. 22; for the alleged reference to 


PART III. VEDIC RITUAL 


CHAPTER 17 
THE RITUAL IN THE RIGVEDA 


It is unfortunately clear that the ritual as it is presented to us in the ritual 
Siitras, in general and often very minute accord with the texts of the Samhitas 
of the Yajurveda and SAmaveda, is not precisely that which is contemplated 
by the hymns of the Rigveda. The divergences which can be proved, even 
with the comparatively scanty material available, are such as to cause it to be 
necessary to recognize that in many cases, where there is nothing available 
to show difference, the ritual may yet have considerably altered between the 
period of the collection, and still more the composition of the hymns, and the 
collections of the Yajus formulae and the Samans. The result, of course, is 
only what must be expected: the ritual in the Sitras shows alterations as 
compared with the texts on which it is based: the priests were restless 
personages, far from content with merely following out a traditional ritual. 
They were given to reflection on the ritual, and to discussions of its meaning as 
is proved to the hilt by the Brahmanas, and as a result we must regard the 
whole of the Vedic period as one of steady modification in detail of the rite. 
That the modification was only in detail we have every reason to believe : it is 
proved for the period from the later Samhitas to the Siitras, as we can see 
that the ritual presupposed by the former is very closely similar in all essen- 
tials to that laid down by the latter, while for the period of the Rigveda the 
many similarities between the expressions of the hymns and the actual 
practice of the later ritual is conclusive of an ordered development, free from 
any catastrophic change. 

It has also to be remembered that there are recorded in the Rigveda 
hymns from many families, and that we must assume that there existed 
according to the divisions of these families variations in the ritual and in the 
terminology, helped doubtless by considerations of metre which evidently 
weighed a good deal with the poets. The Rigveda contains in some places 
almost a superabundance of technical terms,” the precise point of which we 
cannot always now determine. The number of priests engaged is proof of the 
already high complication of the ritual. We have the names Hotr, Adhvaryu, 
Avayas, Agnimindha, Gravagrabha, and Canstr in one place, and Hotr, Potr, 
Nestr, Agnidh, Pracastr, Adhvaryu, and Brahman in another. In other 


' Cf. Oldenberg, GGA. 1907, pp. 221 ff. ; 1908, pp. 711 ff. 
* Hillebrandt, Rituallitteratur, pp. 11-19. 





Chap. 17] The Ritual in the Rigveda 253 


passages we find Upavaktr, Udagrabha, Purohita, Samagas, Simanyas, and 
the two Camitrs. Of these the Udagrabha and Gravagrabha disappear as such 
in the later ritual: their manual acts became doubtless of less moment, 
and were left to the assistants of the Adhvaryu: the Upavaktr or Pracastr 
became the Maitravaruna, and his duty of giving to the Hotr the direction to 
recite his verses is expressly mentioned.! Moreover, we find the clear distinc- 
tion already made between the recitations of the Hotrs to which the words 
uktha and ¢anrs apply and the songs of the SAman singers which are distin- 
guished by the use of the Gayatri and Pragatha metres, and by the frequent 
use of triads of verses for singing as strophes.? For the Adhvaryus there were 
no doubt prose formulae: the long sets of verses which the Yajurveda pro- 
vides for them are never hinted at. 

The hymns of the Hotrs were evidently even at this period united into 
litanies, Ukthas, and in the litanies were inserted the formulae called Nivids, 
celebrating the gods who were to enjoy the offering; the term Puroruc, 
which later means merely a Nivid in a different place from the usual Nivid, is 
also mentioned : even the curious breaking up and transposing of a verse in 
recitation which is common later (viharana) is mentioned, it seems, in jest.® 
The Nivids are not preserved for us in the Rigveda, but they are extant in 
a collection, and it was asserted by Haug‘ that they take us to an earlier 
stage in the offering than the Rigveda itself; this is not borne out by their 
form and contents ; while the Nivids of the Rigveda must often have been 
similar to those preserved, the latter are elaborated and later in date.> The 
Saman singers were already divided into the two classes of Udgatrs and 
Prastotrs at least : the Samans, or tunes, Brhat and Rathantara were known, 
perhaps also others like the Cakvara : as in the ritual, the Samans were sung 
to the verses used by the Hotrs in some degree at least. The Cakvari verses 
preserved only in the Simaveda were known. The technical terms are found 
in which the Adhvaryu in the ritual is asked to give the word for the recita- 
tion to begin,® and his response, and the frequent formulae astw ¢rausat,’ 
vasat, and svdhd. But one class of priest which is found in the later ritual, the 
Brahman as overseer of the whole sacrifice, is not recognized in most, if not 
the whole, of the Rigveda; the Brahman mentioned there seems to be the 
priest later distinguished from the Brahman as Brahmanacchanhsin, and the 
Purohita of the king, who is mentioned in the Rigveda as securing rain by an 
offering,’ probably was at this stage of the offering ready to perform the 
part of one of the priests, not to supervise the whole. At this time we may 
fairly say that the importance of the ceremony must have belonged to the 


Mt 21 Xn00, 10 Rgveda, pp. 136-41. 
* Oldenberg, ZDMG. xxxviii. 439 ff.; cf. ° Oldenberg, Religion des Veda’, p. 387, n. 2. 
xlii. 246. ® cansdvadhvaryo and prati grnihi, RV. 
* RV. vi. 67. 10 as rendered by Ludwig, ili. 53. 3. 
Rigveda, iii, 222. 7 RV. i. 189. 


* Aitareya Brahmana, i. 36ff. Forthe text *® RV.x. 98. 
see Scheftelowitz Die Apokryphen des 


254 Vedic Ritual [Part III 


Hotr, as the composer of the hymns, rather than to any other priest. The 
name Hotr, which is the Avestan Zaotar, carries us a step farther back in the 
ritual when the priest was called by the name he bore from his performing 
the actual offering, but the Hotr, who first meant offerer, had by the time of 
the Rigveda left to the Adhvaryu the actual manual work of the sacrifice. 
With this complication of the sacrifice it well accords that it seems clear that 
the practice was well established for Vedic priests to wander here and there, 
giving their services for hire for the performance of offerings. The formal 
choice of the priest (rtvig-varana) which is known from the later ritual is 
clearly alluded to in the Rigveda. 

The nature of the sacrifice appears clearly from the number of priests 
mentioned: it was as dealt with in the Rigveda an elaborate procedure 
destined for the advantage of some rich patron, prince, or noble, or wealthy 
commoner : the term Vivasvant here and there seems given in honour to the 
mortal sacrificer, as the priests liken themselves to the gods in their activity. 
The Vedic ritual and the Rigveda alike know no temple service or abiding 
places of worship: the altar, Vedi, is made in the house of the offerer : before 
it is placed the fire which is said to sit upon it : the pressing stones are there, 
and there the bunch of grass, which is gathered in the early morning in the 
east, and to which the gods are invited to come and sit down. The two altars? 
of the later ritual are here reduced to one only: this is in accord with the 
obvious fact that in the later rite the duplication of altars is artificial. The 
fire was carefully kindled by friction, and then placed in three separate places 
within the altar ground: one only, the Garhapatya, appears by name in the 
Rigveda, but Hillebrandt * has attempted to prove that the later Ahavaniya 
and Daksina are to be found in the Vaigvanara and Naracansa or Kravyava- 
hana, though not with convincing evidence. The taking of the fire from one 
fire altar to another as later on is referred to. Thrice a day was honour paid 
to the fire with sacrifice, wood, and hymns. Mention is made of the ladle, 
Sruc, and two Darvis used in making the offerings to the gods, around which 
fire was borne, doubtless as a magic purificatory spell. Among the offerings 
appear milk, butter, grain, and cakes, and animal offerings of the goat, bull, 
cow, sheep, and the horse. The last offering must already have been per- 
formed with stately ceremony : the hymns devoted to it mention the hewing 
and ornamenting of the post, the goat slain to precede the steed on the way to 
its last abode, the golden coverlet put on the horse, the cooking of its flesh, and 
the division of the pieces to the eager priests. 

In the case of the Soma sacrifice, which in the Rigveda is the most im- 
portant of all, the parallelism to the later offering is marked. There are 
clearly three pressings of the Soma, morning, noon, and night, the first and 


' From hu, ‘pour’; Macdonell, Vedic vabha’s view). Cf. AB. i. 2. 
Grammar, § 146. As early as Yaska ? Vedi and Uttaravedi, ‘ High Altar,’ 
(Nir. iv. 26 ; vii.15)it wasderivedfrom * Ved. Myth. ii. 98 ff. 
hve, * call,’ as well as from hu (Aurna- 


Chap. 17] The Ritual in the Rigveda 255 


last possibly denoted by the later obsolete terminology Prapitva and Abhi- 
pitva.1 The metres Gayatri, Tristubh, and Jagati are divided as later among the 
three pressings. The Rbhus have as later a place in the evening, Indra and 
the Maruts in the middle pressing : the morning pressing later seems to have 
been extended in effect. The Soma was pressed and mixed as later: the 
terminology here seems to have changed: apparently in the Rigveda it was 
mixed with water in the Koga, then placed in two similar bowls, the Camis, 
and there mixed with milk and afterwards poured into Kalacas for its use at 
the rite ; in the ritual texts the Koga is replaced by the Adhavaniya or mixing 
vessel, one of the Camis became assimilated to it in material, clay, and became 
the Pitabhrt, ‘ containing purified Soma,’ the other was called the Dronaka- 
laga, ‘ wooden vessel.? Grahas in both early and late ritual were used for the 
offerings to the gods. Even the Pravargya ceremony of the heating of milk 
in a pot was known,’ and such details as the offering of a cake to Agni Svistakrt 
at the end of the rite. 

Besides Soma, Sura and honey were used in offerings : in the later ritual 
the former is used in the Sautramani and Vajapeya rites, of which the former 
seems to be known to the Rigveda, while the latter appears only in the 
Vajapeya. 

The giving of gifts to the priest at the end of the rite was evidently fully 
appreciated and valued, to judge from the repeated references to the practice, 
and the glorification of the faith which induces the sacrificer to bestow 
largesse. 

Moreover, there is no doubt that in the Rigveda we have sets of hymns 
intended for use at the sacrifice as well as material less intimatély connected 
with the sacrifice. Proof beyond doubt of this is afforded by the occurrence 
of series of verses which are used later at the Praitiga Castra of the Agnistoma, 
and which must have from the beginning had their place there.t| The Apri 
hymns for the fore-offerings of the animal sacrifice, preserved in the different 
books of the Rigveda, are an invaluable proof of the difference. of family 
tradition, which is obscured in the ritual text-books which we have. Other 
cases are clearly proved: thus we seem to have in one hymn a collection of 
Anuvakya and Yajya verses for the offering to Agni and Soma of the goat 
which is an essential element in the Agnistoma rite: ° there is further a set of 
Anuvakya verses for the cakes offered at each of the three pressings of the 
Soma sacrifice,® and for the offering of the pot of curd.?, One hymn clearly was 
meant for use at the anointing of the sacrificial post,® others at the kindling of 
the fire.? Still more interesting is the fact that the later practice of having 
sets of three verses to open the Vaicvadeva Castra is clearly found already in 


1 Bloomfield, JAOS. xvi. 24 ff.; Oldenberg, * RV. i. 2, 3, 23 &c.; Hillebrandt, Ved. 
SBE, xlvi. 183 ff. Myth.i. 259. 

2 Oldenberg, ZDMG. Ixii. 459-70; Mac- ° RV.i. 93. 
donell and Keith, Vedic Indea, ii. 513, ° RV. iii. 28, 52. 
514. TRV exaLTo: 

3 Garbe, ZDMG. xxxiv. 319 ff. SRY. Ss SOR VEGveresas, tile 275 


256 Vedic Ritual [Part III 


force.! The end verses of the litanies, the Pardhaniyas, seem to be found in 
the Rigveda,” but the further suggestions of Bergaigne 3 as to the tradition of 
the different schools open up difficulties not yet fully solved, indeed insoluble. 

The chief point in which the Rigveda gives little parallelism with the 
later ritual is the household ceremonies of all kinds. There are indeed traces 
of hymns made for such occasions as the ploughing,* the return of the cattle 
from the pasture,® their driving in and driving out,*® but these are almost 
isolated. There are, however, hymns for marriage’ and the funeral ritual,® 
and a few hymns dealing with magic rites, such as the removal of jaundice by 
the sun,® the prevention of miscarriage,!° and the prognostication of 
misfortune. 

The imperfection of the record of the Rigveda renders it necessary in any 
account of the Vedic ritual to deal with the ritual, as it stands in the later 
Samhitas and the Brahmanas, and as it is set out in full detail in the Sitras, 
while using the Rigveda wherever possible to explain in how far the views of 
that collection agree with the ideas later prevalent. This fact exposes it to 
certain danger: it is perfectly true that much which is recorded later is 
clearly old, and is omitted in the Rigveda, mainly because that collection is 
only concerned with a limited portion of religious practice. On the other hand, 
religion is in the constant process of change, and things recorded first in the 
later texts may be new inventions. 


1 RV. v. 82. 1-3, and 4-6. SVR VeVelDg « 
2 Hillebrandt, GGA. 1889, p. 421. > RV. vi. 28, according to AGS. ii. 10. 7. 
* Recherches sur Vhistoire de la liturgie *® RV.v.112; x.169. 
védique (Paris, 1888 and 1889). He 7 RV. x. 85. 
takes viii. 6, 81, 82, as intended for § RV. x. 14-18. 
the Atiratra, i. 92 for the Prataranu- Pt Viewers 
vaka and so on. For other guesses see 1° RV. v.78. 7-9; KQ€S. xxv. 10. 5. 
Hubert and Mauss, Année sociol. ii, ™ RV. ii. 42 and 48. 
80, n. 2, 938, n. 7. 


CHAPTER 18 
THE NATURE OF THE VEDIC SACRIFICE 
$1. The Sacrifice as a Gift 


As we have seen, the Vedic pantheon is essentially a body of great and 
powerful gods before whom the worshipper realizes to the full his comparative 
weakness and inability to exist satisfactorily without their constant aid. By 
the most simple logic he applies to the powers divine the same principle which 
he applies to other more powerful men, or which are applied to him by his 
inferiors. He seeks to propitiate them by the process of giving gifts.1_ Doubt- 
less, beside this view of the relation of man to the gods, there existed the 
belief that he could do much for himself by the power of the magic art, which 
we need not doubt flourished as much then as in later India, and against 
demons of all kinds magic is freely employed, but the essential distinction of 
magic and religion is plainly to be seen in the whole of the Vedic religion. 
Often too in place of using magic, or still oftener in supplement of magic, the 
aid of the gods is employed in the battle with the demons. In the case of one 
of the higher gods alone is there any trace of other than a relation of friendship : 
the aim of the worshipper is to satiate Rudra and to avert his dangerous 
presence: this fact, which expresses itself in the ritual in many ways, makes 
a certain degree of difference between the case of Rudra and the other gods, 
though occasionally some of these, such as Varuna, show slight traces of a 
similar conception of their nature to that of Rudra. 

The dead stand in a peculiar relation to man, since they deserve from him 
consideration and honour, but mingled with that conception is the fear of the 
quick for the dead. It is often asserted 2 that the mode of honouring the gods 
is a direct imitation of the mode of providing for the dead, but the assertion 
admits of no proof, and must stand or fall with the effort to demonstrate 
a priori that all sacrifice or worship of gods is secondary, and dependent on 
the cult of the dead. In the Vedic, as in the Greek ritual, the nature of the 
cult of the gods and that of the dead is markedly and in important measure 
different,* a fact which tells, as much as any such argument can tell, against the 
original identity of the two cults. This fact renders it at once desirable and 


* This is recognized even by Feist (Kultur kins, Origin of Religion, chap. xi. 
der Indogermanen, p. 351), though he 7? Hirt, Die Indogermanen, pp. 514, 515; 
inclines to trace all worship to the cult Kitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer der 
of the dead. Cf. Tylor, Primitive Cul- Griechen und Rémer (1915). 
ture, ii” 372 ff., who shows the ease of * Stenzel, Opferbrduche der Griechen, pp. 
developing the ideas of homage and 127 ff. 


renunciation from that of gift; Hop- 


17 [x.0.s. 31] 


258 Vedic Ritual [Part IIL 


convenient to treat of the cult of the dead together with Vedic eschatological 
conceptions in the next part of this work. 

In the Rigveda and in the later period alike the cult of the gods is marked 
by the absence of any temple or house of the god, even of the simplest kind. 
The nearest approach to such a conception is perhaps the fires of the Sabha 
and the Avasatha which in the Siitras are mentioned as to be kept up by 
kings ;1 but in this we have merely an occasional use, and the Vedic ritual 
has nothing similar to the tending of a perpetual fire by Vestal Virgins in the 
house of the king as at Rome.” There is no public cult, merely the carrying out 
of offerings for princes and other men wealthy enough to employ professional 
priests, and the performance of a much simpler cult by the householder 
himself. The essential form of the sacrifice is one which can be carried out 
under these circumstances, and it reduces itself to the invitation of the god to 
come to the place of offering, and to partake of the food and drink provided 
for him. The gifts of costly jewels or garments and of chariots or weapons 
or other accoutrements, are wanting in the ritual, partly no doubt from the 
absence of any place in which such jewels and other gifts might be kept, but 
more perhaps from the fact that the priests considered it in their own interest 
to secure that these things should be disposed of most wisely by bestowal upon 
them. In so highly developed a priestly atmosphere as that of the ritual it is © 
at least reasonable to believe that gifts, which an earlier piety might have 
conveyed by fire to heaven, were converted to their own use by the vicegerents 
of the god on earth, who even in the Brahmanas claim the title of god for them- 
selves, while in the classical literature it is assumed by the king. 

It was of course essential that the god invited should be received in a due 
place, and that any honours which were possible should be paid to him. 
Hence the hymns of praise, the sound of music, and the dance: even perhaps 
the theosophical riddles * with which at the great horse sacrifice the priests 
delighted one another, and it may well be the god, since gods were built 
by priests in their own image. But in addition to these features there was 
much more in the Vedic sacrifice, mimic combats, ribaldry, chariot racing, 
archery, dicing, and much else, which cannot be deemed save in quite a 
secondary way to have been thought to be part of the entertainment provided 
for the god. In the vast majority of these cases the nature of the ritual 
can be solved at once by the application of the concept sympathetic magic, 
and this is one of the most obvious and undeniable facts in the whole of the 


Above, Part IIT, Chap. 10, § 1. 
This fact very markedly distinguishes 


temples, as opposed to sacred groves, in 
Germany, see Tacitus, Germ. 9 ; Helm, 


Vedic from Babylonian religion; the 
lack of temples assimilates it to Iranian 
religion, which, however, seems to have 
known fire altars of a somewhat per- 
manent character; cf. Jackson, GIP. 
ii. 688, 701; Moulton, Karly Zoroas- 
trianism, pp. 52, 53. For the lack of 


Aligerm. Rel. i. 235, 286 f. 


3’ Bloomfield, JAOS. xv. 172; it has been 


suggested (Koegel, Gesch. d. deutschen 
Lit. I. i. 5, 64 ff.) that such riddles are 
Indo-European, but the best parallel 
from Teutonic sources is late (cf. 
Helm, Aligerm. Rel. i. 110 ff.). 


Chap. 18] The Sacrifice as a Gift 259 


Vedic sacrifice : it is from beginning to end full of magic elements,! which can 
as a rule be perfectly easily disentangled from the rest of the rite. In some 
cases it is impossible not to feel that the rite is merely magic dressed up with 
sacrifice, but in the majority of rites no such view is possible, and in many 
the magic element is wholly secondary. 

The nature of the ordinary offering to the god is expressly stated to be an 
offering made to the god for the purpose of attracting his attention and good- 
will, so that, delighted himself, the god may reward in the appropriate way his 
worshipper. This is essentially the standpoint of the Rigveda where the 
sacrificer is promised wealth both temporal and in the world to come in return 
for his sacrifice, and his gifts to the priest, and where the gods are invoked to 
delight themselves with the offering and to reward their votaries.?, The Brah- 
manas bluntly state the doctrine of do ut des in so many words,* and Sucravas, 
we are told, was approached by Indra, who told him he was hungry and gladly 
took from him the cakes of the offering. But the gods in the Rigveda are not 
less frank in their expression of feeling : they can sympathize with the poor 
man who can offer but little,> but they are bitterly indignant with the rich 
man who gives nothing. The whole formula is excellently expressed in the 
Saktavaka formula uttered near the end of the sacrifice, where it is said,° 
‘ The god hath accepted the offering ; he hath become strengthened ; he hath 
won greater might,’ to which the sacrificer for whom the rite is performed 
replies, ‘May I prosper in accordance with the prospering of the god.’ 
It is, however, needless to multiply examples : this theory of the sacrifice and 
its result as an exchange of gifts, of strength for strength, is the fundamental 
fact of the whole Vedic religion. ' 

Beside this form of offering in hope of favours to come very small traces 
can be found of the offering which expresses grateful thanks for favours paid. 
The two ideas are clearly closely connected and to a generous people the 
existence of the one might seem to bring with it essentially the existence 
of the other. But it is clear that as in Roman religion the traces of the thank- 
offering are scanty and, though the idea is known, it has a feeble existence. 
_ A Sitra? prescribes such an offering for the case in which a man after falling 
ill recovers his health: the case is interesting for its simplicity : if a man falls 
ill after establishing the three offering fires, he should go away from his place 
of abode: the fires love the village and in their desire to return thither may 


1 Similarly in Babylon and less markedly in pp. 55 ff. ; Année sociol. ii. 29 ff., for 
Greece ; Farnell, Greece and Babylon, a criticism of which see below, § 4. 
pp. 176-8, 291 ff. The gift theory of ? RV.i. 54. 9; iii. 36. 3, 9; vii. 32.6; x, 
sacrifice is accepted by Baudissin, 49.1. 
ZDMG. lvii. 832 ff.; Westermarck, ?* TS.i.8.4.1; cf.iii.2.9.7; (B.i.2.5.24; 
Origin and Development of the Moral viii. 1.2.10. 


Ideas, i. 623. Itin partis akintothe ‘* PB.xiv.6.8. 

dynamic theory as accepted by Warde ° Bergaigne, Rel. Véd, ii. 227. 

Fowler, Religious Experience of the * Hillebrandt, Neu- und Vollmondsopfer, 
Roman People, p. 184, from Hubert and p. 144, 

Mauss, Mélanges @histoire des religions, * AGS. iv. 1.1 ff. 


L7* 


260 Vedic Ritual [Part TI 
heal him, in which case he should perform a Soma or an animal sacrifice. The 
offering of firstfruits,1 however, is mainly if not entirely an offering to secure 
the safe eating of the new products,? an idea which is of world-wide extension. 
If a man has a son born to him 8 or attains a thousand cattle # he sacrifices, but 
merely to secure the health of one or the other ; if he makes a vow and keeps 
it on the fulfilment of the occasion, as for instance if he says to a god, ‘ Slay 
him and I will offer to thee,’ the keeping of the promise, which was not always 
done, is not a thank-offering.> If the dead have a feast made for them when 
there is a birth in the family or a wedding,® it is not according to the texts for 
thanks at their bringing about the good fortune: it may rather be that they 
are expected to share in the common joy, or that it is hoped to avert their envy 
of the good fortune of the house. The horse sacrifice ? is indeed offered after 
the attainment of the position of a great prince, but the ritual shows that it 
concludes with a prayer for the welfare of the king and his people and the 
birth of a prince: it is in effect an offering to secure the maintenance of the 
success arrived at, a fact hinted clearly by the assertion of the Brahmanas 
that it is fatal to a weak king to make such an offering. 


§2. The Sacrifice as a Spell 


In the theosophy of the Brahmanas it is an accepted fact that the sacrifice 
has a magic power of its own, and that it brings about the effects at which it 
aims with absolute independence : the old idea of the working upon the good 
will of a deity has disappeared, and in the philosophy of the Pirva Mimansa,°® 
which is the logical outcome of the Brahmanas, the idea of god is effectively 
disposed of. But the theosophy of the Brahmanas is of no value as religion, 
and the question arises whether the Rigveda shows any real trace of the belief 
in the magic efficacy of the sacrifice. Much of the evidence which has been 
adduced by both Bergaigne ® and Geldner !° for the view that the priests claim 
to control the gods, to capture them in the net of the sacrifice, and make them 
do their bidding, is clearly without weight : the simple imagery of the poets 
cannot be pressed to mean more than it says. The later literature, which 
regards the priest as powerful to control the gods, openly says so,!! and provides 
the believer with magic devices in order to bind hard the Adityas until they 


1 Lindner, Fesigruss an Béhtlingk, pp. 79 ff. People, pp. 201-2; for Germany, 


* CGS. iii. 8; Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, 
pp. 310 ff.; Hubert and Mauss, Année 
sociol. ii. 96, 97; Lagrange, Etudes 
sur les religions sémitiques (1905). 

hi! WME ty fah i 

SUT Selle bape 

"FAV. Vie LLl lee Oa Vis Soe Ors eA Devils 
14. Vows of this kind play a very 
prominent part in Roman religion, but 
not in Vedic. Cf. Warde Fowler, 
Religious Experience of the Roman 


Helm, Aligerm. Rel. i. 242 ff. 

* Caland, Altind. Ahnenkult, pp. 37 ff. 

* AB. viii. 21 ff. ; Hillebrandt, Festgruss an 
Béhtlingk, pp. 40, 41; cf. Weber, Ind. 
Stud. x. 150. 

* Ganganatha Jha, The Prabhdkara School 
of Pirva Mimansda, pp. 87 ff. 

® Rel. Véd. ii. 229 ff. ; iii. 164. 

10 Ved, Stud. i. 189 ff. 

OOS. SED). 


Chap. 18] The Sacrifice as a Spell 261 


yield what is desired,! and Kutsa is said to tie Indra up in disgraceful fashion,?* 
but nothing of that gross kind can certainly be found in the Rigveda. The 
most that can be adduced are a passage where Indra is spoken of as pursued by 
the priest with milk as hunters the wild beast,* a prayer that the mortal may 
be lord over Agni in his house,‘ and an assertion that honour, Namas, is above 
the gods themselves,® nothing more than occasional expressions of exaltation 
in the priestly power. Moreover, when the Vasisthas pride themselves on 
drawing Indra away from Pacadyumna, they evidently assume that the god 
was free to choose, and preferred them to their rival.6 But, while the idea of 
the power of the sacrifice over the gods is merely commencing to manifest 
itself, there is clear evidence that the belief in the greatness of the sacrifice 
was in process of steady development. It is seen in such declarations as that 
the sun was born through the result of the sacrifice of Atharvan,’ and from the 
fact that the offerings of the Angirases won the treasures of the Panis is 
deduced the doctrine that great might is that of the Soma-presser.8 The 
greatness of the sacrifice is also brought out by the doctrine of the first sacri- 
fice of the gods in which they offered up the giant Purusa:° from this 
sacrifice were born the hymn and the metre of the sacrifice: the idea of the 
production of sacrifice by sacrifice is precisely in the strain of shallow mysti- 
cism which is characteristic of the Vedic conceptions. That the human offering 
could produce results by itself is here and there, it would seem, recognized in 
the Rigveda, where the morning Agnihotra seems to have power to aid the 
sun to rise,!° and more distinctly in a late hymn the bringing down of rain is 
treated as if it were the direct work of the Purohita Devapi.“ 

It would, however, be a complete error to assume that the magic side of 
the sacrifice is the primitive one, and that the whole sacrifice is really a magic 
performance. The sacrifice might well have in it ab initio elements of magic, 
and certainly the Vedic sacrifices known to us have many, but the Brahmanas 
enable us to see clearly that the priests were determined to find in them 
throughout a magical effect. To every point some special working is attri- 
buted, and it becomes possible to secure ruin or prosperity for the sacrificer 
by the mere manipulation of some detail of no importance. All this is clearly 
the work of a later constructive religious outlook, and what is most noteworthy 
is not that, here and there, the same spirit is to be found in the Rigveda, but 
that it should play so small a part in that collection. Nor can there be any 
doubt that, in the course of the fixing of the ritual, many details must have 


mS, ii, 3. 1. 5. SOR Vie visas: 
* PB. ix. 2.22; JB.i. 228 (JAOS. xviii.382). * RV. vii.33. 2. 
The view accepted by Hillebrandt 7 RV.i. 83.5. 
(Ved. Myth. iii. 291) that RV. x. 38.5 * RV.i.83.4, 3. 
really means this is hardly credible. ® RV. x. 90. 6, 9. 
Cf. ZDMG. xl. 713; Oldenberg, °° Bergaigne, Rel. Véd.i. 140; Hillebrandt, 
Rgveda-Noten, ii. 243. Ved. Myth. ii. 83. 
* RV. viii. 2.6; cf..iti. 45. 1. a RV. x. 98. 
RY. iv. 15; 5. 


262 Vedic Ritual [Part III 


been added or altered, simply for the purpose of introducing elements of magic 
potency: it is impossible not to see such influences effective in the drawing up 
of many of the details of the horse sacrifice,! which is reduced by the Vedic 
texts to a performance, which cannot possibly have ever been realized in 
practice, and in which the magic purpose of much of the machinery is plain 
and undeniable.” 

A further question arises whether we can trace behind the Vedic sacrifice 
as a gift offering the older view that it is really not a gift at all, but an effort 
to secure the propagation of the life of the herds and of the world of vegetation 
by the periodic slaying from time to time of the spirit of vegetation, or in the 
case of animals of a representative of the species, in order to secure the fresh- 
ness of the life of the vegetation and of the beasts of the earth. In this view, 
which is that of Sir J. Frazer,* the sacrifice in the long run is reduced purely 
and simply to a piece of magic: it represents a period before man ceases to 
believe himself lord of nature, and master of all that he desires, and, recog- 
nizing the futility of his high belief in humanity, turns to the conception of 
supernatural powers, whom he supplicates for the results, which he thought 
formerly to bring about by his own magic powers. The substantial element at 
the back of the theory is, of course, the considerable mass of facts adduced by 
Mannhardt, and before him by Grimm, which illustrate the widespread usage 
of the killing of the outworn corn spirit, perhaps with some idea of strengthen- 
ing it, though of late a very formidable opponent to that theory * has appeared 
in the shape of the view that the thing which is destroyed is not the corn spirit 
at all, but the witches and wizards whose attacks on the crops are perpetual, 
an idea which is richly proved for India by the figures of the Raksases and their 
constant conjunction with sorcery. There are, however, features of the later 
religion of India such as the legend of Krsna and Kansa,° which point to the 
old vegetation ritual in which the contest between the spirits of winter and 
summer is revealed, and this conception has certain affinities with the theory 
of the killing of the corn spirit when outworn. In the Vedic ritual, however, 
it is extremely difficult to find any case in which this theory can be applied 
with much plausibility. 

One instance has been adduced by Hillebrandt ® which is of interest in 
itself. At the concluding bath of the horse sacrifice a sacrifice to Jumbaka is 
offered on the head of a man of repulsive appearance, who is driven into the 


1 Cf. Weber, Rajastiya (Berlin, 1893). Lang, Magic and Religion (1901) $ 

* Roman religion shows a similar tendency F. Legge, Forerunners and Rivals of 
to degradation into magic, though Christianity, i. 91-7 ; A. B. Cook, Zeus, 
this fact can be exaggerated; thus i. 13, 776. 
Warde Fowler (Religious Experience of | * Westermarck’s view based on his investi- 
the Roman People, Lect. iii) insists gation among the Berbers ; see Golden 
that the magic element in Roman Bough’, x. 328 ff. ; xi. 1 ff. ; below, § 4. 
religion was diminished by the priest- ° Keith, JRAS. 1911, pp. 1108 ff.; 1912, 
hood. pp. 413 ff. ; 1916, pp. 335-49. 


* The Golden Bough’ (London, 1911-14); * Ved. Myth. iii. 28-38. 
see my criticism, JHS. xxxv. 281-4; 





Chap. 18] The Sacrifice as a Spell 263 


water, and the texts make it clear that Jumbaka is believed to be Varuna and 
that the appearance of the man is intended to correspond with that of Varuna. 
Now the man who plays the part in this rite is said to be an Atreya, bought 
with a thousand cows, and it is further mentioned that the formulae used at 
the time of the oblation include ‘ To death hail! To the slaying of an embryo 
hail!’ and it is therefore suggested by Hillebrandt that we have here the 
trace of the slaying of a man, a view which was also taken by Weber,! who 
thought that the man was drowned in the waters. Hillebrandt further con- 
nects the story with the legend ? of the proposed killing of Cunahcepa, who was 
bought in the same way from his father to be offered in the place of the son 
of the king Hariccandra who has offered to sacrifice his son to Varuna, and he 
concludes that there was a practice at one time of slaying the old king and 
substituting another, the slaughter taking place at the end of the horse 
sacrifice. The theory is ingenious, but it is clearly without any contact with 
fact. The story of Cunahcepa is one which has no allusion anywhere to the 
practice of slaying the old king: it is the son whom the father offers to kill, 
and connexion with the killing of the old king could only be arrived at by 
supposing that, in view of the existence of the custom in question, the old 
king took the precaution of seeing that no son to supersede him was forth- 
coming, which is really absurd. The case of the offering to Jumbaka is also 
clearly misunderstood : there is preserved for us in a Sitra* an invaluable 
hint of the meaning in the statement that the guilt of the village outcasts is 
thus removed: the ceremony belongs to the numerous and important class 
of services for the expulsion of evil, and the ceremonial bath acts as a purifica- 
tory element rather than, as suggested,* as a piece of vegetation magic. 
The hideous appearance of the man is explained by the same fact, for the 
Pharmakoi ® in the analogous rite in Greece, in whom have been seen by an 
amazing piece of ingenuity the prototypes of Adam and Eve, are also hideous, 
and the assumption that we have in the features of the man the imitation of 
the features of Varuna is an absurd idea, well worthy of the Brahmanas. The 
payment is only natural: the priests were always well aware of the value of 
their services, and honesty must admit that they were fully entitled to expect 
high payment for the disagreeable duty of taking on themselves the burden of 
the sins of the village outcasts. The idea that the Atreya priest was really 
once the old king thus vanishes into the limbo of practical impossibilities. 

It is, however, more important to consider whether such an idea can be seen 
in the horse sacrifice itself, not in the bath ceremony which is a mere appendix. 
The essence of the horse sacrifice is the slaying of the steed, which is treated 
with great honour, gaily caparisoned, and is invited to eat the remains of the 
night oblations of grain which, if refused by the steed, are thrown into water, 
1 See Keith, JRAS. 1908, pp. 845-7. outcasts by bathing in this bath are 
2 AB. vii. 13 ff.; CCS. xv. 17 ff. purified. 

* (CS. xvi. 18. 21 should probably be thus ‘ Hillebrandt, op. cit. iii. 30, n. 1. 


interpreted; Eggeling, SBE. xliv. ° Murray, Greek Epic’, pp. 317 ff.; cf. 
p.xl. Accordingto KQS. xx. 8. 17, 18, Frazer, The Scapegoat, pp. 252 ff. 


264 Vedic Ritual [Part IIL 


doubtless because their sanctity is too great to permit of their consumption by 
any one else. Nor is it possible to doubt that in the rite the horse is really 
the horse of the sun; the steed Dadhikravan, whom we have seen to be the 
steed of the sun, is said to be the sacrificial horse. It may, therefore, be sug- 
gested that by the slaying of the horse, which is solemnly performed, it was 
originally intended to perpetuate the race of horses, and that later on, when 
the horse was regarded as representing the sun, the rite became a sun spell. 
It is right to state the possibility of such a development: the probability is 
obviously practically negligible. The same remark applies to the other cases 
of the ritual : if for instance the goat is offered to Piisan as it often is, then, as 
we must admit that Pisan seems to have been once conceived as in goat form, 
it is possible that the original offering was simply that of a goat, in order to 
propagate the race of goats, or at a later period of a goat as the representative 
of the corn spirit; but in this case also we would have to admit that the whole 
theory had been entirely forgotten in Vedic times, where the offering was in no 
sense periodical, and when the goat form of Pisan was far from being vividly 
present to the worshippers, while the gift theory of sacrifice remains for this 
case the most simple and obvious explanation possible. The horse sacrifice 
presents more difficulties, but none that are helped by the theory of the corn 
spirit.+ 


§3. The Removal of Sin by Sacrifice and Magic 


In the ritual of the sin offering the mixture of magic and sacrifice presents 
itself in the clearest way. The sin offering is only in essence a special form of 
the gift sacrifice: the gift is offered to avert the wrath of the god : it seeks to 
produce in him not the positive action of furthering the welfare of the 
suppliant as is normally the case, but the negative attitude of sparing the 
guilty man. In its rudest form the chain of ideas must be assumed to be that 
the food and drink will delight the god, and thus he will forget his anger : 
such a view is based on one of the most primitive instincts of mankind: the 
hungry man is unlikely to forgo his wrath, while the soothing effects of meat 
and drink on humanity, however just its anger, and moral its indignation, are 
notorious. Nor is there any doubt that simple sacrifices to avert the anger of 
the god, usually Varuna, were common: it is legitimate to suppose that 
the hymns of deprecation * of the anger of Varuna and of expressions of hope to 
be reconciled with him, which are found in the Rigveda, were accompanied by 
sacrifice : it would be very remarkable if this were not the case, but apart from 
that point the ritual is well aware of such offerings. Thus for the breach of an 
oath an offering is ordered to Agni Vaicvanara,*® who may safely be assumed to 
have been the god by whom in the special instance the oath was sworn, and 
who therefore must be appeased if he is not to execute vengeance for the 
breach of faith. 

1 Keith, Taittiriya Samhita, i. pp. exxxii-vii. 
* e.g. RV. vii. 86, oT SS, 112 2.,6,.2 





Chap. 18] The Removal of Sin by Sacrifice and Magic 265 


On the other hand, the element of magic enters very largely into the 
ceremony of the Varunapraghasas,! the second of the four-month offerings, 
On the first day of the offering barley is roasted on the Daksina fire, the one 
used for all ritual acts of an uncanny description : then a number of dishes of 
a porridge made from the barley are prepared, one for each member of the 
family with one over, apparently for the members yet unborn. The wife of the 
sacrificer is then asked by the priest what lovers she has; she must name 
them, or at least indicate the number by holding up as many stalks of grass 
as she has lovers, and by this action she purifies herself from her sins in this 
regard: otherwise, if she does not tell the truth, it will go badly for her con- 
nexions. She is then taken to the southern fire, in which she offers the plates 
with the words, ‘ Whatever sin we have committed in the village, in the forest, 
among men and in ourselves, that by sacrifice we remove here,’ and further 
on an offering is made to Varuna, who is asked to spare the lives of his sup- 
pliants, and not to be wroth. The nature of the sacrifice is evidently in the 
main magical : the offering to Varuna and the consciousness of sin are there, 
but it may be legitimately be said that the essential part of the rite is the 
expulsion of sins by means of the magic rite, though due note must be taken 
that, as preserved to us, the other ethical element comes in. The burning of 
the dishes is of course essential, as they are laden with the sin: it may be 
compared with the purification by water of the scapegoat in the horse sacrifice, 
to which reference has been made above. In the course of the Soma sacrifice * 
the priests throw into the fire splinters of the wood of the sacrificial post, 
charging them with the removal of the sin wrought by the gods,,the Fathers, 
man, and themselves. In the Sautrimani® offering a vessel filled with a 
special preparation is allowed to float away with the sins of those concerned. 
In the case in which a younger brother commits the crime of marrying before 
the elder,* the sins of both in the form of fetters are thrown into the foam 
of the water, and thus allowed to vanish. The washing of the mouth removes 
the sin of untruth for three years °—the mystic three or the unit one ® are most 
common in these statements of time—and the evil brought by an ill-omened 
bird can be washed away and removed by the carrying round of fire.’ In 
the same way are used plants,* the Apamarga plant seems to owe its very 
name to its uses in such rites, amulets,® and spells.1? On the other hand, the 
intervention of the gods is constantly mentioned: Agni Vaicvanara, Agni 
Garhapatya, Savitr, Pisan, the Maruts, Vicvakarman, the All-gods are 
invoked to remove the evil. Theevil in fact is treated precisely like a disease, 


1 CB. ii. 5.2.20. Hubert and Mauss(Année ° TS. vi. 6.3.1. 


sociol. ii. 111, n. 8) compare the 7 AV. vii. 64; Kaug. xlvi. 47, 48. 
Levitical examination of the adul- SEAVe Villads Ole ker laee 
teress. SAV, Xe Ge Ox 
* Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, p. 325. 10 AV. v. 30. 4. 
Pas, xx. 14 ff, 3 KCS, xix, 5.18. a AV. vi. LIQ vil. 6G402)8 xils2e115 12°: 
‘ AV. vi. 118.2; Kaug. xlvi. 28. XLV. 2; OP dese Vilert tetas il.w2d. oO 


S AV. x. 5.22; Kauc. xlvi. 50. vi. 112. 8; 118.2: 115,,&c. 


266 Vedic Ritual [Part II 


and is to be dealt with in just the same way. Moreover, as is natural, the con- 
cept of evil is of the widest possible kind : every sort of error in the sacrifice, 
every sort of out-of-the-way occurrence in the life of the home and the herds, 
such as the birth of twins, every sort of strange occurrence in ordinary nature, 
is made the cause for such an offering, and the Brahmanas and still more the 
Sitras pile up long lists of offerings under the rubric Prayagcitta,! a term 
which is not yet found in the Rigveda. The taste for such inventions is 
clearly one which grew with the development of the priestly system, and must 
from the constant number of such Prayaccittas, and the gifts to the priest 
which were enjoined as an essential part, have counted for much in the life 
of the priesthood. For religious purposes they are of little interest, since they 
consist in the main of offerings overlaid with magic practices of the most 
simple and obvious kind. 

There is another set of practices connected with the removal of sin which 
present difficulties, and which are only recorded at the very end of the Vedic 
period, but the antiquity of which can hardly be seriously doubted. The 
Brahman student is under a duty of chastity: if he fails in this duty he is 
required to make an offering of an ass to the goddess Nirrti: his portion 
of the victim is cut from the penis: and thereafter he goes about clad in the 
skin of the victim and begging for alms, duly proclaiming his sin to those from 
whom he begs.? The husband who sins against his wife wears also an ass’s 
skin and begs, proclaiming that he has sinned against her. The murderer 
earries the skull of the dead man, drinks out of it, wears an ass’s skin or the 
skin of a dog, which indicates him as a murderer to all and sundry, and lives 
on alms, declaring to those from whom he begs the crime which he has com- 
mitted. There are here obviously many and varied elements of belief: the 
element of confession is clear in all these cases : the wickedness is made less by 
being declared, a doctrine which is of course prominently exhibited in the 
case of the Varunapraghasas, at a much earlier date than the customs 
reported in the Sitras. A second motive may be the warning of others of the 
nature of the being with whom they deal; to a primitive people, believing 
in the physical transfer of evil, such a warning was a real necessity : this is 
parallel with the fact that the guilty generally are often ordered to remove 
from contact with the living.> The bearing about of the skull of the dead and 
drinking from it is attributed by Oldenberg ° as possibly due to the belief that 
demons drink from the skulls of the dead, an idea which might of course be 
traced back to the reflection in belief of an actual custom :7 as the custom and 


1 ApGS. ix; xiv. 16 ff.; KCS. xxv; ‘ACS. * ApDS.i. 9.24.18; 10.28.18; 10. 29.1. 
ili. 10-14; vi. 6-10; CCS. iii. 19-21; ° Rel. des Veda’, pp. 327, 328. 
xiii. 2-12, &e. HGS. ii. 1. 7. Cf. the use of Vrtra’s head 


a] 


*+GDS. xxii? 3) PGS sini. 1278. as the dronakalaga in the Soma sacrifice 
* ApDS. i. 10. 28. 19. For the use of the (TS. vi. 5. 9. 1), perhaps also that of 

skin cf. Cook, Zeus, i. 422 ff. Makha’s head (RV. x. 171. 2; Olden- 
* ApDS. i. 9. 24.11; 10. 28. 21 ff.; GDS. berg, op. cit. p. 90). 


xxii, 4; BDS.11. 1.1.8: 


Chap. 18] The Removal of Sin by Sacrifice and Magic 267 
the belief are reported to us both from the same late stage of the literature, 
there is no external evidence to aid in a decision. Oldenberg suggests also 
that it is the idea that the crime must be allowed to take the fullest control 
of the sinner, and in the observances in question expression is given to this 
rule. Itis, however difficult to feel assured that this is a plausible explanation ; 
it is required in reality only for the episode of the carrying of the skull, and this 
carrying seems in itself rather to be reminiscent of the carrying of such a skull, 
and the use of it for very different reasons, namely the keeping under one’s own 
control of the spirit of the angry dead,! modified no doubt in later belief 
often merely to an added insult to the memory and spirit of the dead. It is 
possible that in the rite which is handed down to us what was originally a 
habit of head-hunters had been reduced to a punishment of murderers. But 
beyond speculation we cannot, it is clear, go. 

The wearing of the skin of an ass or of a dog, which were both unclean 
animals ?—that is to say, animals of a peculiar nature—cannot be regarded as 
explained by the theory of Oldenberg, even if it could be given credence to any 
extent. The case of the student is here the most interesting, as it involves 
a sacrifice, and has the most primitive appearance: the dog was clearly in 
some ways a peculiar beast: nothing but the utmost hunger would drive 
a man to eat a dog:? it is therefore quite possible that the wearing of the 
skin has no reference to any sacrifice, and the wearing of the ass-skin by the 
murderer may easily be due to the fact that the practice was customary in 
other cases. In that of the Brahmacarin the most obvious and simple explana- 
tion of the rite is that the virility of the ass 4 is its most marked feature, that 
the wearing of the skin and the eating of the special part assigned to the 
student were intended to replace the manhood expended improperly. The 
fact that the offermg was made to Nirrti then ceases to stand in special 
relation to the goddess, as connected with the ass : Nirrti is the personification 
of dissolution: to her an offer might properly then be made in the circum- 
stances, and, as often, we find the offering intermingled with the magic rite, 
as in the case of the offering to Varuna at the Varunapraghasas.® The 
wearing of the skin might then easily degenerate into an intimation of 
the sinfulness of the wearer, as it certainly was recognized in this use in the 


3 The head-hunting and preservation of 
heads were characteristic of the Celts 
(MacCulloch, Rel. of Anc. Celts, pp. vincing ground. Cf. Keith, JRAS. 
240 ff.), Germans (Miillenhoff, Deutsche 1916, pp. 542 ff. 

Alt., iv. 145), and other Aryans(Brunn- * Cf. Manu, x. 106; RV. iv. 18. 13 (a very 
hofer, Arische Urzeit, pp. 322-4, 372). obscure text). 

2? PB. xxi. 3.5; ApDS. i. 3.10.17. The ‘* Cf. Reinach, Culies, Mythes et Religions, 


larly for the Celts, MacCulloch, Rel. of 
Ane. Celts, pp. 219 ff., without any con- 


totemistic theory of tabooed animals 
may be applied both to the dog (as in 
the case of the dogs of Aktaion) and the 
ass (Marsyas as an ass) as has been done 
for Greece by Reinach, Cultes, Mythes 
et Religions, iii. 87; iv. 40-4. Simi- 


iv. 29 ff.; Cook, Zeus, i. 626. 


> That the ceremony there is really sacrifice 


pure and simple (Eitrem, Opferritus 
und Voropfer der Griechen und Romer, 
p. 136) is very improbable. 


268 Vedic Ritual [Part III 


Sitras, but that this idea is primitive is absurd. The case of the man who has 
abandoned his wife is probably the same: the magic power of the skin is to 
give him virility, and induce him to perform his duty which he has abandoned : 
it must be remembered that, as with most primitive peoples, and in the Roman 
Catholic faith of the present day, cohabitation with his wife is a man’s bounden 
duty, an idea reflected in various Indian stories. 

The only other explanation of the rite which may at first sight seem 
plausible is the idea that the ass is the representative of the man, in that the 
man instead of sacrificing himself to the angry deity offers a substitute. We 
might, if we accepted this view, rank with this case the instances of the 
representation of the members of the family by the dishes in the Varuna- 
praghasas, the offering of hair to the dead,! and the assertion of the Brah- 
manas that the victim which is offered to Agni and Soma in the course of the 
Soma sacrifice is really offered as a ransom for oneself. This theory, however, 
will not stand any close examination. The explanation * of the hair offering 
is open to the gravest objection : it seems rather a mere mode of bringing the 
living into the closest possible connexion with the dead, through the medium 
of part of himself, without any idea that he either should or would give himself 
as an offering. The case of the dishes is obviously a case of simple material 
transfer without any idea of offering of the members of the family, and the 
victim for Agni and Soma is only said to be a substitute in explanatory 
and speculative passages, and even there the view is evidently not always 
accepted : its true nature will be explained later. The explanation in the case 
of the ass sacrifice is also most improbable : it treats the sin which is evidently 
by no means a very serious one—the chastity of the Brahmans was evidently 
of a somewhat mild order of virtue—as if it were a deadly sin, a conception 
not at all a favourite one with the priests. 


§4. Communion and Sacrament in the Sacrifice 


While in the view of Sir J. Frazer the essence of early sacrifice is the magic 
art of perpetuating the life of the herds and of vegetation and even of man, 
the gift theory of sacrifice has also been declared * to be merely derivative, 
on the ground that it is really a faded remnant of the sacrifice in which the 
worshippers eat together of the flesh and blood of the deity, thus renewing and 
strengthening the bonds between themselves on the one hand and the god on 
the other. That such a form of sacrifice existed is beyond all doubt attested 
for the Semites, but not for the Babylonians, and there are traces of it in Greek 


1 Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, p. 323, n. 1. The Magic Art, i.28 ff.; Gruppe, Griech. 

SLs Viel eadle Ol Als oll ce Olstt iS Ease etet Es Myth., pp. 913 ff.; Cook, Zeus, i. 23-5, 
CB. iii. 3. 4. 21; cf. xi. 7. 1. 3 (of the 593. Cf. also Keith, JHS. xxxvi. 108; 
Pagubandha generally); Keith, Tait- contra, Eitrem, Opferritus und Voropfer 
tiriya Samhita, i. p. exiv. der Griechen und Rémer, p. 387, n. 4. 


’ G.A. Wilken, Rev. Col. Internat. iii. 225 ff.; 4 R.Smith, Rel. of Semites, p.365 ; Reinach, 
iv. 353 ff. For other views see Frazer, _ Cultes, Mythes et Religions,i.96; ii. 101. 


Chap.18] Communion and Sacrament in the Sacrvfice 269 


and in other religions. It is not necessary to insist, as does S. Reinach, that 
the origin of such an offering is totemistic : it is perfectly possible without any 
such system at the base to explain it : O. Gruppe ? treats this form of sacrifice 
as the oldest and most primitive of all, the effort to obtain directly and most 
effectively a share in the divine power felt in the world. But it is one thing to 
believe in the existence of the sacrifice in this form, and to prove that it is 
the only type of sacrifice, and unless this can be done the gift form of sacrifice 
must continue to stand as an independent form. The objection that the gift 
theory must be later than the communion and sacrament form of sacrifice, 
because the conception of private property is necessary for the making of 
gifts, is not worth the consideration which has been sometimes shown to it. 
It is obvious that, apart from all other considerations, it has from the first been 
possible to offer to a god material things without any precise conception of 
ownership having been attained. 

Now in the conception of the sacramental communion there are clearly 
present two elements which need not necessarily be combined. It is possible 
for the communion to appear by itself alone: the worshippers are imagined to 
eat and with them the deity eats, so that the deity and his worshippers have 
thus a common bond in the food which they consume: of this the Homeric 
sacrifice® clearly presents us with a good example, while another is given by the 
Latin festival on the Alban Mount.* In the second place, however, there may 
be more than this: the victim may be in some way divine: the most 
developed idea will be found when the victim is imagined as actually being 
an embodiment of the god for the time being, but it may be that the victim is 
merely more or less affected by the divine spirit from the fact that the god 
comes to the place of offering, and therefore that the divine spirit affects the 
victim and the place of offering.® Of the latter idea there is a clear hint in the 
Homeric ritual of sacrifice of an animal victim: the barley seems to have been 
laid on the altar, and then brought into contact with the victim to convey to 
the victim the divine spirit present in the altar, and this idea is confirmed by 
later evidence, such as the sacrifice at Athens known as the Bouphonia,® and 


} Farnell, Greece and Babylon, pp. 241 ff. 
A good example of the common meal 
as a means of producing harmony is 
givenin Kaug. xii. 8, 9. The same Sitra 
(xiii. 6) prescribes a magic rite, in which 
portions of the members of some 
animals, lion, tiger, he-goat, ram, bull, 
a warrior and a Brahman student are 
to be eaten, to attain the possession of 
certain qualities ; there is, of course, no 
totemism in all this; Henry, La magie 
dans U Inde antique, pp. xxviii, 87, 95. 

2 Cf. Murray’s theory (Four Stages of Greek 
Religion, p. 37), which holds that the 
victim is devoured not as divine, but 
merely to obtain its mana, the diviniza- 


tion arising later. 

’ Cf. Lang, The World of Homer, p. 129, with 
Murray, Greek Epic’, pp. 61 ff. 

‘ Cf. Warde Fowler, Roman Festivals, 
pp. 95 ff. 

° Cf. the worship paid to the offering im- 
plements by the Vedic Indian, to their 
ollae by the Arval Brethren (Warde 
Fowler, Religious Experience of the 
Roman People, pp. 436, 489), to the bells 
of their cattle and milk pails by the 
Todas (Rivers, Todas, p. 458). 

° Cf. Keith, Taittiriya Samhita, i. pp. evi- 
viii; Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, 
i. 56-8, 88-92; Hubert and Mauss, 
Année sociol. ii. 107 ff., 65, n. 3. 


270 Vedic Ritual (Part IT 


apparently the same idea is to be seen in the sprinkling of the mola salsa on the 
head of the victim in the Roman ritual and of melted butter in the Vedic rite. 

Now in the Vedic ritual, as in the Roman, we find a considerable amount of 
evidence of the eating of the offering by the priests, after the god had partaken 
of it. The essential feature of the ordinary sacrifice is expressed in the solemn 
invocation of the Ida, the sacrificial food derived from the cow, which is 
repeatedly conceived in cow form. She is invoked to come forward, and she 
is expressly called a cow, and, when the god has eaten, shares in her are con- 
sumed by the priests and by the sacrificer,? in so far as he is qualified by being 
a Brahman to partake of the food. The latter restriction is one which we can 
only prove for the later period of the Vedic ritual, but the position of the 
priest at the outset of the ritual is such as to render it most probable that the 
rule was always in full operation in the historical period. The same practice 
applied to all normal kinds of offering, the animal sacrifice and the Soma 
sacrifice included, though we find in the Aitareya Brahmana? that the king is 
excluded at the royal consecration from the use of Soma and given Sura 
instead. The same rule applies to the Grhya ritual: it is laid down that a man 
should eat nothing without making an offering of a portion of it, every meal 
when an animal is killed for a guest is, as in Homer, a sacrifice.t A Snataka, 
or Brahman student, after he has taken the final bath concluding the student- 
ship, is allowed to eat remains of food offered to the gods and to the Manes : 
in the latter permission, as in the rule that the wife, who wishes offspring, 
should eat a portion of the food offered to the Fathers,®> we must doubtless see 
the idea of placing oneself in close touch with the Fathers. In an offering to 
Ksetrapati,® in which the god is represented by a bull, the remains of the 
food are duly eaten by the relatives, and in another offering, the Madhuparka, 
the Rudras, Adityas, and the All-gods are first fed, then the sacrificer, and 
then a Brahman: if there is no Brahman available, then the food may either 
be thrown into water, or the whole may be consumed by the sacrificer. The 
practice is interesting : it is clear that in the domestic ritual the rule that the 
only person who may eat the food is the Brahman is not in force: the sacri- 
ficer, who is the householder himself—and who may of course be himself a 
Brahman, but need not be--and his relatives have the first claim: after that 


1 TS. vii. 1. 6.8; VS. iii. 27; ApCs. vi. 38. People, pp. 172 ff. The idea of com- 
Bs ACS ots it aleshn Oetker cs fea OLon munion was seriously restricted in the 
TB. iii. 5. 8. 13; 18.1; Hillebrandt, official religion asin Vedic religion. So 
Neu- und Vollmondsopfer, pp. 124 ff. ; also in Iran; cf. Herodotos, i. 182, 
Hubert and Mauss, Année sociol. ii. 81, where the flesh is not (as stated by 
82, who compare the Christian Mass. Jackson, GIP. ii. 702) eaten by the 

* In Babylon the worshipper did not eat, priests, but used by the sacrificer as he 
though the priests might do so; pleases. 


vii. 26 f. 
CGS. ii. 14. 28 ; ii. 153 iv. 5. 10, 11, 12. 


they, however, did not eat with the god; 
Farnell, Greece and Babylon, pp. 241, 
242. For Rome see Warde Fowler, GGS. iv. 8. 27 ; cf. ACS. ii. 7.17. 

Roman Ideas of Deity, pp. 58, 59; HGS. ii. 9; Keith, JRAS. 1907, pp. 
Religious Experience of the Roman 939 ff. 


o fF Pp 


Chap.18] Communion and Sacrament in the Sacrifice 271 


the food which by its contact with the divinity is clearly specially valuable is 
either given to Brahmans, or disposed of in an effectual way. The ritual in 
many cases preserves express statements of the relation of the sacrificer to the 
sacrifice : if he does not eat a portion of it, he is excluding himself from it," 
the Aitareya Brahmana says ; but at the same time it is clear that it is rather 
a serious business: the hot milk in the Dadhigharma offering is expressly 
asked not to injure the partaker of it.2. In some cases the idea of community 
resulting from the sacrifice seems clearly marked: thus the newly married 
couple, after their first entry into the common home, share food together from 
an offering made by the husband ;* in the ceremony of the initiation of a 
pupil the teacher gives the pupil to eat of the offering which has just been 
made, saying, ‘ May Agni place wisdom in thee’ ;* the sacrificer partakes of 
the offering of butter, which he and the priest have together touched before 
the sacrifice of Soma, and thus embodies in himself the idea of fidelity which 
was created by the touching ;* the mother eats part of the food which is 
given with ceremonial rites to the infant as its first solid nutriment,® a practice 
in which Oldenberg’ sees the idea of securing for her future children the 
strength given by the rite to the existing child, but which is far more simply 
explained as a mere ceremony of communion. Possibly here too may be 
added the case of the ass sacrifice of the Brahman student which has already 
been noted: it may be conceived that the victim is made efficacious for its 
special purpose by the bringing it near to the god by sacrifice. 

The same efficacy of the sacrifice is to be seen in cases where the offering 
produces its result by contact,® not by ordinary eating. Thus in place of 
eating food together the husband and wife may rub each other’s hearts with 
the offering,® and at the end of the three days of continence enjoined upon 
them the remains of the offerings are rubbed into the body of the bride.1° 
Similarly, if on the way to their home the car breaks, an offering is made, and 
the remains rubbed on the mended part.44_ The horses which are to engage in 
the race in the Vajapeya sniff the offering in order to gain swiftness ; }* the 
cows are driven so as to snuff the fragrance of the offering made in the fire ; 
in the Soma sacrifice, the Vajapeya, the piling of the fire, and the Sautrimani 
alike occur cases in which the offering is used to rub the sacrificer to convey to 
him strength and healing.'* At the animal sacrifice by touching the victim the 


MAB. vii. 26. 2°30 cf. TA. v. 8512. 6 GGS.1. 27. 11. 

2 VS, xxxviii. 16. 7 Rel. des Veda,? p. 333, n. 3. 

3 GGS.ii. 3.18 ; MB.i. 8.8; doubtless the 8 Hubert and Mauss, Année sociol. ii. 76 ff. 
sameidea asin the Roman confarreatio. ° AGS.i. 8. 9. 

4 HGS. i. 4. 9. 10 GGS. ii. 5. 6. 

5 Weber, Ind. Stud. x. 362. It must be ™ GGS.ii. 4. 3. 
taken that Warde Fowler (Religious Ex- 1 Weber, Vdjapeya, pp. 28, 31. 
perience of the Roman People, p.181)is % HGS. ii. 8. 10; ef. SVB. i. 8.14; for 


wrong in holding that the flesh which man, K(S. iv. 9.11. 
was eaten by the priests had lost its 1‘ ACS.v. 19.6; KQS. xiv. 5.24; xviii. 5. 
holiness, though in the case of Iran Hero- 9; xix. 4. 14; Weber, Ind. Stud. x. 


dotos (i. 182) gives the same impression. 351; xiii. 285, 


Pag ys Vedic Ritual [Part II 


sacrificer is brought into contact with the sacrifice, and when, in the case of 
an offering to Rudra, the cakes are hung up on a tree, the sacrificer should 
touch them and win healing power.? 

On the other hand, when the deities to whom the offerings are made are 
terrible, it is clearly natural that the offering should be regarded as not 
suitable for human consumption: in Greece the offerings to the dead and the 
chthonian divinities were not normally eaten. So in India, when rice cakes are 
offered to the Fathers, the sacrificer refrains from eating them: he merely 
smells them :? it is normally not right to partake of an offering to Rudra ; # 
if an offering is made for one who seeks thus to find death, at the consecration 
one should only smell, not taste: ° in another case, the Dadhigharma, or 
offering of hot sour milk, the remains of the sacrifice may be eaten by priests 
who have undergone the consecration, but not by others who are less well 
fortified for the risk:® it is the native explanation,’ and it is reasonable 
enough to hold that the mere smelling is a compromise between the necessity 
of partaking as normally and the danger of the action. The terrible character 
of the offering is further indicated by other usages : when an offering is made 
to the Raksases, to Rudra, to the Fathers, or the Asuras, or when an im- 
precation is made,’ the sacrificer should touch water. When an offering is 
made to the Fathers,’ in one case, the sacrificer looks north, whereas the 
quarter of the Fathers is the south ; when he offers to Rudra, he looks south, 
for Rudra’s place is in the north, and the offerer is constantly bidden not to 
turn round after an offering to Rudra, which is explicable only by the view 
that the. dread god is on the scene in bodily presence. We may here also 
include the theory, already mentioned, of some theologians that the victim to 
Agni and Soma at the Agnistoma should not be eaten : it may have seemed to 
some that the presence of the gods Agni and Soma made the victim too 
dangerous to permit of close contact. But the general rule was that it should 
be eaten as is in one case expressly stated. 

On the other hand, it was always possible to eat of even the offering to a 
dread god ; thus in the case of the offering of an animal to the god Rudra,!° 
which is to be made in a part from which the village cannot be seen, we meet 
with the same phenomenon as has already been seen in two cases in which it is 


AV TS).V1.\da.0.'1, 25 CO.dll. Salts st UberE 
and Mauss, Année sociol. ii. 67, n. 1. 

2 CB. ii. 6. 2. 16. 

2 CB. XilOe Let k ats lt Aeon eae Genlanoe ts 
Ap¢S. viii. 6. 3, 12; KQS. iv. 1. 20; 
v. 9. 13. 

4 AGS. iv. 8. 31. 

5 KCS. xxii. 6. 2. 

¢ KCS. x. 1. 26. 

PANELS E BANC, Ye 

® (GS.i.10.9; KQCS.i. 10. 14. 

® CB. xiv. 2. 2. 35, 38. 

10 AGS. iv. 8. 1ff.; PGS.iii.8. Hubert and 


Mauss (Année sociol. ii. 93) by com- 
bining with this account the very 
different one of HGS. ii. 8,9; ApGS. 
xix. 138-xx. 19, conclude that the 
rite consists of bringing into the victim 
the divinity of Rudra and then banish- 
ing it from the village. But this is 
wholly illegitimate: the animal is not 
divine at all in AGS. or PGS., and is 
not banished in HGS. or ApGS. That 
the rite is known to the Rigveda is 
wholly unproved. 


Chap. 18] Communion and Sacrament in the Sacrifice 273 


allowed to eat of an offering to the dead. It is expressly said that the sacrificer 
must not eat any part of the victim, that he must not let the wind of it blow 
upon him, that he must not take any part of it into the village, and that he 
must keep his folk away from the place of offering, all clear proofs of the pre- 
sence of the god, but it is also stated that he may eat of it on an express 
injunction, and that then the eating will bring him great luck. It is an error 
to underestimate? the value of this evidence : it proves that the nature of the 
effect on the offering is to fill it with holy power, and that the eating of part 
of it conveys that holy power, which may be well worth having in some 
special cases,” though normally when Rudra is the god concerned men may not 
care to come too near to it. From this point of view also we can understand 
the true force of the fact that the blood of the victim was not partaken of by 
the priest and the sacrificer : in this Hillebrandt * has seen a ground of dis- 
tinction between the Indian and the Semitic theory of sacrifice, in which the 
blood is precisely the essential thing, which the worshippers desire to share, 
as is seen in the horrid Arabian rite reported by Nilus in which the worshippers 
eat the victim uncooked-and take care to save all the blood, while in the Vedic 
view the blood is impure and given to the Raksases.* It is not that the blood 
is impure : it is rather that it is particularly full of the divine power, doubtless 
as the seat of life of the animal, and the part into which the divine spirit can 
most easily enter, and thus is offered not to men but to spirits, often it is clear 
to the snakes ® as the representatives of the earth spirit, an idea which explains 
also the Greek theory of purification by blood: the person purified thus by 
the use of blood places himself in communion with the goddess of the 
earth.® 

It is true that, as has been pointed out by Oldenberg’ and others, the 
theory of the sacrifice as a communion with the deity, whether by the direct 
rite of eating with him, or as a sacrament through eating a victim, which 
has become impregnated in some degree with the deity, is not recognized 
as such in the formulae of the ritual: we simply find nothing of the view 
that the worshippers are eating together with the god in order to renew their 
relationship. The solitary prescription above mentioned regarding the victim 
to Agni and Soma does not hint at this view at all: it merely refers to the 
theory which is several times expressed in the Brahmanas that man is the 


1 Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, p. 337, n. 1. (ibid., p. 196). Greek religion was 


* As a sick man can eat the offering to the 
dead, and have swift death or recovery, 
ACS. ii. 7. 17. 

3 Thiere und Gotter, pp. 3, 4; 
JAOS. xvi. p. ccxxxix ; 
op. cit., p. 360. 

4 The official Roman religion seems to have 
made little use of the blood (Warde 
Fowler, Religious Experience of the 
Roman People, p. 180) though the 
popular ritual recognized feasting on it 


18 [n.0.s. 31] 


Hopkins, 
Oldenberg, 


different in this regard. Cf. Hubert and 
Mauss, Année sociol. ii. 79, n. 1. 

° AGS. iv. 8. 28; Winternitz, Sarpabali, 
p. 41. 

6 Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, iv. 304 ; 
the use of blood for purification is 
hardly Roman ; in the Lupercalia it is 
borrowed from Greece (Deubner, Archiv 
f. Religionswissenschaft, xiii. 481 ff. ; 
contra, Cook, Zeus, i. 677). 

7 Rel. des Veda’, p. 331, n. 2. 


274 Vedic Ritual [Part IIL 


original victim,! and that other victims are substitutes. We might expect to 
find the theory recognized in the case of the Soma sacrifice, when Soma was 
identified with the moon, and the Brahmanas ? do tell us that Soma is killed 
when he is pressed for the Soma drink, and that what is drunk at the rite is the 
moon, but all this remains merely an expression of the fact that the moon 
decays and is supposed to be drunk up by the gods in heaven, and analogously 
by the gods on earth, the priests who have the knowledge of the mystery of the 
identity of the Soma plant and the moon. The conditions which might have 
developed a conception of the sacrifice as a communion of men both inter se 
and with the god, and as a sacrament through the feeding on a victim which is 
really an embodiment of the god, were present only in germ, and they do not 
seem to have generated the consciousness of the sacramental nature of the 
offering, although the effort to assimilate the victim to the god was always 
present and effective. The victim was preferably an animal which was a 
theriomorphic form of the god, bulls to Indra, goats to Pisan and to Agni, and 
so on; the sex was assimilated and the colour chosen with regard to the 
nature of the god.? None the less we must admit that, whatever the reason, 
the Indians of the Vedic period, like the Romans, differed radically and vitally 
from the Semites who practised the sacramental sacrifice in the fact * that, 
though the animal victim might be chosen for its close connexion with the 
deity and in the actual offering be filled with the divinity, they did not in their 
normal thought press this view to the conclusion that the offering really caused 
the death of the god. Further, though the Vedic Indian recognized that by 
eating the remains of the offering he was bringing himself into close com- 
munion with the divine power and that the victim was in some sense semi- 
divine, he did not feel that in the death of the victim there was perishing some 
person essentially of kin to him, and therefore to be lamented, as the per- 
formers of Greek sacrifices in several cases may have lamented the victim, or 
for whose death punishment was necessary, as suggested by the ritual of the 
Bouphonia. Even in animal sacrifice there is no trace of kinship with man, 
though we have the clearest evidence of the desire to deprecate the anger of the 
kin of the dead beast * and the recognition of the fact that the victim will have 
power to confer richness in cattle as acceptable to the gods,® and there is no trace 
in the ritual of disapproval of the slayer as suggested by Hubert and Mauss.’ 
It is difficult also to ascertain what element of ecstatic enjoyment of the 
sense of union with the deity entered into the sacrificial ritual. The gods, 


* CB. vi. 2.1.2 ff.; i. 2.3.6; MS.iii.10.2; ° Hubert and Mauss, Année sociol. ii. 68, 
AB. ii. 8 ; Lévi, La doctrine du sacrifice, n. 3. 
pp. 133 ff. * TS.iii.1.4,5; MS.i. 2.1, 
> CB. iii. 3.2.6; Lévi, p.170; Hubertand 7 Op. cit. 68, n. 4. The interpretation of 
Mauss, Année sociol. ii. 129 ff. AB. ii. 7. 10 is quite clearly not a 
* Hillebrandt, Thiere und Gétter; Stengel, general attack on the slayer, whose 
Opferbrduche der Griechen, pp. 187 ff. ; epithet apdpa refers to ritual accuracy. 
Cook, Zeus, i. 634. * Die Anfdnge der Yogapraxis im alten 
‘ Keith, JRAS. 1907, pp. 940 ff. Indien, pp. 116 ff. 


Chap.18] Communion and Sacrament in the Sacrifice 275 


we learn later, once appeared in bodily presence at the offering, but had 
ceased to do so, but this is not conclusive against the natural belief that the 
singers in their sacrifices believed themselves actually to behold the gods whom 
they invoked. We find prayers ! for the eye of Agni to enable the worshipper 
to behold the demons and sorcerers, a plant has the power to make demons 
visible, the dicer sees the dancing Apsarases, and in the stress of battle we may 
safely assume that Indians who prayed to their gods had visions, as in 
medieval or modern days, in which they beheld the objects of their invocation 
lending them divine aid. Especially in the invocations of Indra, the Maruts, 
and the Acvins, all gods of especially concrete character, who are of present 
help in time of trouble, do we find indications which suggest that the priest 
believed that the gods would, if duly praised, reveal themselves to his longing 
vision.2. Possibly too we may reckon here the prayers in the Apri hymns 
which bid the divine doors open wide to admit the gods to the offering, and 
the conception of the path of the gods to the heaven may be due to this cause. 
The Fathers, we know, appeared to their worshippers, for we hear of Yatus 
who smuggle themselves in among them assuming their form. 

The offering produces also another sense of communion, in the divine 
ecstasy produced by the Soma drink. The Vedic poets have not the gift of 
imaginative description of a Euripides, and we find but little expression of the 
state of mind produced by imbibing the powerful potion. Still it is clear that 
those who drink can say, ‘ We have found the light, we have become immortal,’ 
and that they truly feel the joy they asserted, even if they cannot claim, like 
the partaker of the sacred rite at Eleusis, ‘ to have escaped evil and found 
what is better’. The classical expression of this ecstatic state is found in the 
hymn * which tradition, in all probability with justice, holds to be the ex- 
pression of Indra’s mind after he has drunk the Soma. The worlds are his 
plaything, he rises aloft in his joy, he speeds on the wings of the wind. Ecstasy, 
naturally enough, is specially the product of drinking the Soma, who is hailed 
as the kind friend and father, who grants length of days, for this boon is 
eagerly desired by the Vedic mystic, as it is by the later Yogin. But similar 
powers are ascribed by the Atharvaveda‘* to the remains of the sacrificial 
offering, full of the divine power, and to the porridge (odana),*® which, eaten, 
gives the worshipper the feeling of attaining the heaven, and in the Agni 
worship there are fainter traces of the development of a more refined form 
of mystic speculative activity. 

Another aspect of sacrifice which has some affinity to a spell and a sacra- 
ment is that emphasized by Hubert and Mauss ° in their theory of the nature 
of sacrifice, based on the evidence in the main of the Old Testament and the 


Vax B72 12.0 AV civ. 20's vil, 109.3. RVs xekl 92 
Se Viti pee Vt OUs Lk selves LisnlOi. s |. o) Xs. Zs 
vi. 29.83; 82; viii. 100; x.48,49,124 ° iv.34,35; xi.1.25. 
(Indra); v. 53 (Maruts); i. 118, 119 * Année sociol, ii. 29-138. 
(Agvins). 
18* 


276 Vedic Ritual [Part III 


Vedic ritual. Their attention has been attracted by the fact that a sacrifice 
produces a definite effect in the performer and the means which he employs : 
he is filled with a sacred spirit as is the victim which he offers, a fact of which 
we have already seen instances, and which cannot be for a moment called in 
question. The Diksa or preliminary consecration, and the concluding bath, 
which provides a means of removing from man in some degree the excessive 
sanctity with which he has become endued in the process of offering, are 
significant proofs of this aspect of sacrifice. The sacrifice, many as are the 
uses which can be made of it, has an essential unity in that it aims at the 
establishment of communication between the sacred and the profane world 
by means of a victim, that is, a thing which is destroyed in the course of the 
ceremony. As opposed to Robertson Smith, the authors lay stress on the fact 
that the victim acquires its sacred character in the rite, and does not possess it 
normally ab eatra, a fact which makes it well adapted for the accomplishment 
of the most varied ends: the current which runs through it can pass to the 
sky from the earth or vice versa equally well. The motive of this desire to 
enter into relations with the powers above is simple enough : man sees in them 
the source of life, and is anxious to attain as close contact with them as possible. 
But immediate contact would be fatal, and would unfit man for secular life, 
as is indeed the case with priests of too great sanctity like the unfortunate 
Flamen Dialis! or the Emperor of Japan: therefore he interposes an inter- 
mediary, who at the same time serves as a substitute for the sacrificer himself. 
This victim must be dispatched to the other world: its soul is liberated by 
death, with its own permission, for it becomes by the sacrifice a powerful 
being which no man would seek to irritate, and its body thereafter may be 
destroyed, whether by being consumed entirely by fire as in the Hebrew 
holocaust, or by being eaten by the priest or the worshippers, or again its 
skin or other portion may merely be brought into close contact with the 
worshipper. Incidentally the sacrifice accomplishes much more than its mere 
immediate aim: if the victim offered by the consecrated man serves to secure 
him his close relationship with the gods, it also sends the spirit of the victim to 
strengthen and multiply the species. All sacrifice is essentially social : it 
involves negation by the individual, but it strengthens the divine which is the 
ideal representative of the social unit, and thus indirectly benefits the indivi- 
dual himself. A further development of sacrifice in its ideal form is the con- 
ception of the sacrifice of the god himself, when the intermediary disappears 
in toto. 

Brilliant as is the presentation of this theory, it is difficult not to feel that 
it is open to the same objection as must be taken to the theory of religion 
presented by Durkheim ? in his exposition of totemism as the earliest stage of 
religion. Religion with him also is essentially a social fact : the totem is the 


Warde Fowler, Religious Experience of the (1915). Contrast C. C. J. Webb, Group 
Roman People, pp. 34 ff. Theories of Religion (1916).. 
* Elementary Forms of the Religious Life 


Chap. 18] Communion and Sacrament in the Sacrifice 277 


material object in which the conception of the unity of the primitive social 
group materializes itself. In both theories we have a tendency to find in 
primitive religion conceptions of too great elaboration and difficulty. Durk- 
heim himself, however, does not abandon the gift theory in practice: he regards 
the gift as essential : the gods created by the collective mind of the group are 
the protectors and guardians of the group, but at the same time they require 
the gifts of the individuals to secure their existence and power. It is clear 
that much of Hubert and Mauss’s theory is borne out by facts, and the doctrine 
that in the sacrifice the victim becomes peculiarly holy is valuable and correct, 
accounting naturally as it does for many peculiarities of the sacrifice, and 
affording in all probability the best explanation of the origin and development 
of the doctrine of slaying a god. But the view that the sacrifice is primarily an 
offering to please the god seems to be borne out by every probability, and by 
the undoubted fact that the sacrifice was normally so understood throughout 
antiquity. In this regard it is impossible not to feel that the authors have 
allowed themselves to be influenced unduly by the theories of the Brahmanas 
as to the nature of sacrifice, and have underestimated the purely speculative 
and learned character of these suggestions. The objection to the gift theory 
insisted upon by Jevons! which represents it as unworthy of the relation 
of god and man is open to the criticism that it sets too high a standard for the 
beginning of religion. Moreover, the gift theory of sacrifice has the advantage 
that it affords in conjunction with other simple conceptions a perfectly natural 
origin for the various forms of offering: the sacramental rite in its simplest 
form of eating with the god follows naturally from the primitive conception 
that a sharing the same food confers similarity of nature, assisted perhaps, as 
Jevons holds, by the joyous feast celebrated by the worshippers at the 
moment when they feel that by their offering they have deprecated the wrath 
of the god and secured his loving-kindness to themselves and their families. 
From this form of the sacramental meal, coupled with the principle of sanctity 
of the offering at the sacrifice, is easily deduced the view that the victim which 
is being offered is the god himself embodied for the time being in the victim : 
Jevons himself explains in a somewhat analogous way the conception of 
eating the god which found a place in the Mexican worship. But it would 
doubtless be a mistake to assume that the idea of the death of the god was 
always produced in this way only: we must take into account the life and 
death of nature and the harvest rites in which the spirit of the corn is assumed 
to die in the cutting of the corn, and to revive in the growth of the young corn 
in the spring, and in which the spirit of the corn, when the harvest is reaped, 
though outworn, is deemed to seek to avoid its doom by passing into some 
animal, bird, or man, and is killed in order that it may revive afresh in the 
spring. But this conception is not developed in Vedic ritual so far as it is 
recorded, nor has it any necessary connexion with sacrifice: moreover, 
it is at least probable that in many cases there has been confusion between the 


1 Idea of Godin Early Religions, pp. 78 ff. 


278 Vedic Ritual [Part III 


killing of evil spirits, wizards supposed to endanger the crop, and the slaying 
of corn spirits proper.1_ In Vedic religion at any rate the conception of grain 
as containing a spirit is hardly to be found: the one piece of evidence from 
the ceremony of the Varunapraghasas ? adduced by Hubert and Mauss ? 
is far from being convincing. 

Jevons * insists that all sacrifice involves essentially the idea of drawing 
near to the god and making an offering to secure his favour, a step adopted 
originally when the community felt that its god was alien from it through 
the misconduct of one of its members, and had to be propitiated by tokens of 
repentance. The offering brought need not be consumable ; if it were, it might 
easily be eaten after acceptance by the worshippers in a festival of joy at the 
feeling of reunion with their god. At first offerings are only occasional, 
evoked by fear of the anger of the god, who, however, is recognized to be justly 
wrath and to be also merciful and willing to forgive his worshippers, but the 
habit of solemn feasting on these occasions is gradually adopted in respect of 
the harvest fruits, when, as in the case of the occasional offerings, the wor- 
shippers first sacrifice to the god, before they partake of the fruits of the earth. 
But, as the fruits are thus sacred, they come to be regarded as divine, and as 
divine they take the rank of deities, the spirits of vegetation, to whom he 
denies in their own right divine status. Sacrifice thus is from the first much 
more than a gift offering or covenant offering; it is also not a communion 
feast, though both the gift and the communion theory of sacrifice are natural 
ways of interpreting the rite, which are adopted by the worshippers. In his 
view the gift theory is essentially irreligious ; from it no true religion could 
spring. This, however, appears a decidedly dubious assertion; it is by no 
means obvious that the presenting of gifts to a god in the hope of favour, 
without consciousness of sin or divine wrath, is not an essentially primitive 
form of sacrifice. 


$5. The Materials of the Sacrifice 


On the gift theory of sacrifice it is natural that man should offer what he 
delights to feed upon, and in point of fact this undoubtedly is the rule in the 
great majority of cases: the Vedic Indians practised agricultural as well as 
pastoral pursuits, and we find therefore that they offered to the gods, not only 
milk in its various forms, as curd or melted butter in several varieties, but also 
grain, barley and rice, which served to make different kinds of cakes, or were 
mixed with milk or curds to form variegated messes. These materials served 
to satisfy many needs, but the animal and the Soma offerings were of still 
greater consequence in the eyes of the priest, though they must have been 
numerically very few in comparison with the sacrifices of simple materials. 


} Westermarck, Ceremonies and Beliefs con- * Ap(S. viii. 5.42; vi. 1 ff., 10 ff. 
nected with Agriculture ...%in Morocco, * Op. cit., p. 111, n. 5. 
pp. 93 ff.; Keith, JRAS. 1916, p.546. ‘* Idea of Godin Early Religions, pp. 60-107. 


Chap. 18] The Materials of the Sacrifice 279 


Libations of water, not of blood as in Greece, for the dead were evidently 
directly connected with the conception of the thirst of the Fathers. Wild 
products such as wheat or sesame were reserved for Rudra, sesame grains were 
peculiar to the dead, and a puerile desire to assimilate the offerings to the 
gods appears in the rules that for Night and Dawn an offering of milk from 
a black cow with a white calf was appropriate,! that for the dead should be 
used the milk of a cow which has lost its own and is bringing up a strange calf,? 
that black 3 rice is the proper offering to Nirrti,‘ that cakes for Agni should be 
offered on eight, those for Indra on eleven, those for the Adityas on twelve 
potsherds, because the metres connected with these deities have those numbers 
of syllables, and so on in unending detail. 

The Brahmanas ® set forth a list of five victims among animals, man, the 
horse, oxen, sheep, and goats: in practice the last three are the common 
victims, and the goat is the most usual of all: wild animals, fish, birds, the 
pig, and the dog are excluded ; the last two were not eaten, the others rarely, 
but it is possible that in their case practical difficulties may explain their 
exclusion from use. At the horse sacrifice, it is true, enormous lists of offerings 
of all sorts of animals are enumerated: the rule is, however, admitted that 
the wild animals were to be set free, and it is absurd to suppose that the lists 
were ever seriously meant to be followed. On the other hand, the offering of 
the horse is contrary to the practice, for the eating of horse-flesh, though never 
in all likelihood unknown in India,® and though practised by many peoples in 
ancient, medieval, and modern times, seems rare in India. It may be con- 
sidered ? as serving either to make swift the god, who thus appropriates the 
swiftness of the animal offered, and through the god to strengthen the man, or 
as is less likely it may be held to be merely dictated by the desire directly to 
secure the offerer the strength of the steed, or again it may be due merely to 
the feeling that the highest beast is in place at a great offering: to this 
question we shall return again. In the case of the offering of an ass to Nirrti 
the aim to secure the replacement of virility by the offerer is obvious, and 
reduces the offering to its real character, a magic rite dignified by the intro- 
duction of the goddess and the form of sacrifice. The offering of a fish-otter 
to Apam Napat § is possibly to be attributed to the same idea: the otter 
suggests and creates the desired water, but it may also fall under the general 
rule of assimilation of the victim to the nature of the deity. 


1 VS. xvii. 70; so oftenin magic; Henry, triads of victims, the Trittoia, ram, 
La magie dans l’ Inde antique, p. 52. bull, he-goat; Stengel, Opferbrduche, 
2 AB, vii.2; CB. xii. 5.1.4; TS.i. 8. 5.1, pp- 195, 196. 
and often. 6 Mahavagga, vi. 23.11. On this point ef. 
8 Red victims for the gods, black for the Reinach, Cultes, Mythes et Religions, 
Fathers, are usual; Caland, Todten- iii. 124; von Schroeder (Arische Re- 
gebrduche, p. 173. ligion, ii. 374 ff.) believes that the 
4 TS.i. 8. 9.1;. CB. v. 3. 1. 18. eating of horseflesh and its offering to 
5 Weber, Ind. Stud. x. 347. The Suove- the sun are Indo-European. 


taurilia of Roman religion have no 7 Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, p. 356. 
precise parallel. In Greece we hear of * Kaug. cxxvii. 


280 . Vedic Ritual [Part IIT 


This practice of assimilation is obvious and natural: it is not indeed 
strictly logical that, because a god is said to be a bull, he should eat bulls, for 
the Vedic Indian never in any time known to us thought that Indra or any 
other god 1 was merely a bull, but the connexion of ideas by which, in choosing 
a special victim, the form of the god suggested the choice is plain and obvious, 
and agrees with the conception that by eating certain animals certain qualities 
are attained by men; by eating bulls the god strengthens his nature in its 
bull aspect. Hence we find that Indra receives bulls and buffaloes,? Pisan 
goats, Agni with his fire and smoke a goat with a black neck,*® the Maruts a 
speckled cow or a speckled animal because of their speckled mother,* 
the ruddy Acvins a red goat,°® the sun and Yama a white and a black goat 
respectively, Tvastr © a special kind of goat because it occurs in his myth, 
and so on. But we must not exaggerate the rule of agreement whether in 
character, sex, or colour. The Maruts sometimes have a barren cow or a ewe, 
Sarasvati a he-goat, Mitra and Varuna a barren cow;’ in other cases the 
colour depends on the object of the offering, not on the god, as when a black 
victim brings rain,® and a red victim is offered by a priest with red raiment to 
destroy a foe.® It is possible, of course, that cases where the sex of the 
victim does not agree may be explained 1° by changes in the ritual, which 
has altered the allocation of victims to different gods, but for this theory there 
is hardly any real ground, as the rule of correspondence in Indian as in 
Greek and Roman religion is merely an approximate rule, and of no more 
than empirical validity. 

The victim has to be killed, so that it shall make no sound and so that 
there shall be no effusion of blood: it seems to have been usually strangled : 
the cruel method of killing recorded by Haug is not shown to have existed at 
any early period.!! Stress is laid in the verse addressed to it on the fact that it 
is not really being killed. The omentum of the victim, a part rich in fat, is then 
extracted and offered up: thereafter the remaining parts are divided for 
offering, a rice cake is offered, portions of the remainder of the flesh are 
offered to the gods with formulae recalling the fact that the omentum has 
already been used, and the priest and other Brahmans eat the rest, keeping 
only the tail for the final part of the rite. The same division of the ceremony 
is observed in the animal offerings to the Fathers made at the Astaka offering, 
and the distinction must be very old.” The separate treatment of the omentum 
1 Cf. Rapson in Cook, Zeus, i. 718, and PAT Sol Le Sas 

Cook’s own doubtless correct view of ° KQCS. xxii. 3.14, 15. 


the motive for the selection of bulls 1° Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, p. 356. 
and rams in special as victims for Zeus ' Schwab, Altind. Thieropfer, pp. 112 ff. ; 


(i. 634, '71'7, 718). AB. ii.6; TB. iii. 6. 11. 1 ff. 
* Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. i. 231. 2 AGS. ii. 4. 13, 14; ef. ApDS.i. 6. 18. 25. 
SVD. XXIV oils The omentum is the self of the victim 
ST CS ARV. 2s) Llosa b Solked Oe 2: (TS. vi. 3.9.5) and its sacrificial element 
5 CB. v. 5.4.1. (TS. tii. 1.5. 2; CB. tii. 8. 2. 28 | AB. 
& KOS. viii. 9.1; RV.i. 161. 8 (basta). ii. 18. 6). 
7 


Weber, Ind. Stud. x. 340, 358, 398, 394. 


Chap. 18] The Materials of the Sacrifice 281 


is proved for the Iranians by Strabo,! who explains that the soul only of the 
victim was given to the gods, except that a small piece of the omentum was 
put in the fire, and a corresponding distinction is to be found in the directions 
of Leviticus * regarding the sin and other offerings. It certainly seems to 
have been an early idea that the burning of the omentum made a sweet smell 
for the god: the Zulus burn it while leaving the rest of the victim untouched, 
believing that the spirits come and partake of it without leaving any trace of 
their feast. In this may be seen some evidence of the process of the transfer 
of the use of fire to its later employment as the normal way of conveying the 
offering to the gods.3 The blood, as we have seen, was left for the Raksases,* 
along with the excrements, &c., of the victim, with which may be compared the 
practice of offering to the same powers oddments of the offerings of grain- 
stuffs, perhaps merely to deprecate their interference by this cheap form of 
sacrifice; but it is possible, as we have seen, that the offering to the Raksases 
must be taken seriously as an offering to chthonian powers of the earth, as is 
suggested by the fact that the snakes are often conceived as receiving blood. 

There is nothing here to interfere with the usual view that the sacrifice is 
essentially a gift offering, not a relic of totemism, or of the offering of a vegeta- 
tion spirit or, earlier, of a spirit of animal life, in order to keep it ever young. 
No such explanation is at all requisite in order to explain the connexion of the 
gods with particular victims, nor to explain the silent death of the victim, 
from which the principal celebrants avert their heads, or the efforts to per- 
suade it that it is not being killed, a device applied also to the tree which 
is being cut for the sacrificial post. The death of the victim is that of an 
animal with a soul which could be wroth, and also full of the divine spirit— 
sometimes so full, as in the case of the victim for Agni and Soma, that some 
would not eat of it—and it is a dreadful thing, therefore, to slay it, though 
necessary. Apart, however, from the place of offering, the animal is merely 
an ordinary animal, and therefore it is difficult to read into the sacrifice more 
than the theory of a gift, sometimes with magic qualities.® 

The question of the human sacrifice is of importance, as in it we should 
expect to find, if anywhere, the clearest recognition of the nature of sacrifice. 
Here, however, the material is wholly inadequate to establish any result. In 
one case we have perfectly good proof that down to a comparatively late date ° 


1 xv. 732; Vendidad, xviii. 70; Catullus, For the averted heads of the priests cf. 
89; cf. the special treatment of the the capite operto of the Roman ritual 
extain Roman worship ; Warde Fowler, (as opposed to the Greek), which may be 
Religious Experience of the Roman a sign of separation from the profane 
People, p. 181. world (cf. Reinach, Cultes, Mythes et 

* iv and vii. Religions, i. 300 ff.), but which may be 

3 Oldenberg, op. cit“, pp. 359 ff. merely a more efficacious means of 

BPS. i. Os 9. 23 ADCS, Vil. 16..145 AB: escaping recognition by the soul of the 
ii.7.1,10; AQS.iii. 3.1; soin the case indignant victim, as in the case where 
of the blood in the cooking of the heart the criminal is veiled before execution. 
of the victim (KS. vi. 7. 13). CB 2 V1. 20t. oO ism Vile vaemliiles) Cl, 


* Keith, Taittiriya Samhita, i. pp. cv—cviii. P. Sartori, Zeit. f. Ethn. i. 32 ff. 


282 Vedic Ritual [Part III 


in the building up of the great altar for the fire ritual, a construction of such 
elaboration that it was doubtless a rare feature in the ritual, it was customary 
to sacrifice five victims, including a man, to build their heads into the altar, 
and to throw their bodies into the water whence the clay for the making of 
fire-bricks was taken, in order to give it abiding strength. Here, however, we 
cannot ignore the obvious fact that under the fashion of a sacrifice, last per- 
formed on earth by Cyaparna Sayakayana, we have dressed up the old 
practice of giving a building strength by associating it with guardian spirits 
of the dead, a usage which has persisted in India down to the most recent times. 
The other cases in which human sacrifices have been seen are extremely 
doubtful.1 The ritual texts, indeed, and some late Brahmana evidence agree 
in describing a Purusamedha, ‘ human sacrifice ’, which follows but on a more 
gorgeous scale the horse sacrifice. We have no reason to believe that it was 
ever a primitive rite: the effort of Hillebrandt ? to show that the passage in 
the funeral hymn in the Rigveda,® which has been supposed to apply to the 
widow of the dead man in the funeral service, really applies to the widow of 
the king, who is supposed, as in the horse sacrifice, to lie beside the victim, is 
a tour de force. If ever the sacrifice was performed, it must merely have been 
an isolated act, produced by the speculations of the priests. There is clear 
evidence that the sacrifice of the mythical Purusa was in some cases at least 
taken as the model of the supposed human sacrifice. Possibly here and there 
myth generated the ritual: there is no conceivable reason to believe in view 
of the evidence that the ritual generated the myth. 

More worth consideration perhaps is the legend of Cunahcepa ;* in it 
Hariccandra the king promises to sacrifice his son to Varuna, if the god will 
give him a son: but, when the child is attained, he defers the offering until he 
manages to obtain a Brahman Ajigarta, who consents to sell his son Cunahc¢epa 
for a vicarious sacrifice, the king having been afflicted by Varuna with dropsy 
and thus recalled to the sense of his duty. When the father binds the son to 
the post and is about to slay him, the gods set him free in answer to his prayer 
and he is adopted by one of the priests present at the rite, Vi¢vamitra, 
leaving his wicked father, while Varuna frees the king from his disease. The 
sacrifice was to have taken place at the royal consecration and the rule is laid 
down that at the consecration of the king the priest must tell the tale, and 
thus free the king from all sin and the fetters of Varuna. It has been suggested 
therefore, very naturally, by Weber ° that we have here the trace of an old 
practice of human sacrifice at the rite which has been abolished, the tale 
instead showing how the practice was done away with. The story, as it is 
recorded, is obviously meaningless, as the king undertakes to slay the son 
which is sent to him, and the motive is as it stands therefore an absurd one. 


1 Keith, op. cit. i. pp. cxxxvii—exl. 4 AB. vii. 13 ff. ; CCS. xv.17 ff. ; Roth, Ind. 

2 ZDMG. xl. 708. Stud.i.457-64 ; Keith, HOS. xxv. 61 ff. 

> x. 18. 8; Keith, JRAS. 1907, p. 226; ° Rajasiiya, pp. 47 ff.; Hillebrandt, Ved. 
Oldenberg, GGA. 1907, p. 218, n. 1. Myth. iii. 32, n. 3. 


Chap. 18] The Materials of the Sacrifice 283 
The Brahman Ajigarta fares very hardly at the hands of the narrator, and one 
motive in it is clearly the connexion of Cunahcepa with the family of Vieva- 
mitra. The most that can be deduced from it in favour of human sacrifice 
is that it is possibly a far-off and dim reminiscence of a possible offering of the 
son of a king in time of distress as a sin offering. Obviously such a story 
allows us to see in it other explanations, for instance that it is an echo of the 
slaying of the divine king or of his son in him—if so, a very distant and dis- 
torted echo, or that it is due to totemism. In view, however, of the lack of 
better evidence of any kind for totemism or slaying the divine king, the 
piacular explanation may stand, if it is realized that the tradition is clearly 
so distorted that we do not know what it means. The conclusion is an im- 
portant one: in later India there are not a few traces of human sacrifice, 
and offerings to Kali have taken place within recent years : the aborigines had 
clearly no hesitation in following certain forms of worship which involved 
human sacrifice,” but the Brahmans remained, like the Roman priests, superior 
to this particularly unlovable peculiarity of the human mind. 

The most important of all offerings in the eyes of the priest was certainly 
the Soma, as is proved by the fact that the Rigveda in the main is a collection 
based on the Soma sacrifice, though not exclusively devoted to it. The 
question of the origin and nature of the plant is insoluble : the efforts made 
to identify it have led to interesting investigations,® but to no sure result, and 
the only thing certain is that the plant, which has been used in modern India 
as the Soma plant, is one which would not be considered by modern tastes as 
at all pleasant in the form of pressed juice mixed with water. We are unable 
naturally to say what would seem pleasant to the Vedic Indian: we know 
that surfeit in the drink had disagreeable results. Curiously enough too we 
do not know whether the drink was really popular outside the circle of priests, 
who took it sacrificially: there is just enough evidence in the Rigveda 4 
to suggest that it was a popular drink, though the normal civil drink is Sura. 
This beverage was made from a decoction of herbs of various sorts, and seems 
to have had characteristics which ally it to beer on the one hand and brandy 


i Either in India or elsewhere, save piacu- 
larly; see Lang, Magic and Religion for the Celts, Rhys, Celtic Heathendom, 
(London, 1901). In Cunah¢gepa’s case pp. 232 ff., 675. 
we should have to admit the custom * Max Miller, Biographies of Words, pp. 
of sacrificing the son in place of the 222 ff.; Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. i. 
king (Frazer, The Dying God, pp. 160 ff.) 12 ff.; Macdonell and Keith, Vedic 
anc to hold that the king really wanted Index, ii. 474 ff. ; Brunnhofer, Arische 
a son in order to save his own life, all of Urzeit, pp. 297-301; Weber, SBA. 
which is absurd. 1894, p. 787; Pischel, Ved. Stud. ii. 

? For human sacrifice in Greek and Semitic 217 ff.; Meyer (Gesch. d. Alt2 II. i. 
religion, see Farnell, Greece and Babylon, p- 903) holds that Bactria and the 
pp. 244-6; for the scanty evidence in Western Himalaya wasits original home 


for Germany, Helm, Altgerm. Rel.i. 293; 


Rome, Warde Fowler, Religious Ez- 
perience of the Roman People, pp. 33, 
320 ff.; Cichorius, Rém. Stud., pp. 7 ff. 


and therefore the home of the Aryans 
(Indo-Iranians). 


« RV. viii. 69. 8-10. 


284. Vedic Ritual [Part IIL 


on the other: that it was intoxicating is proved by the ill repute in which it 
normally was held, and by its very limited use at the sacrifice, in the Sautra- 
mani, where it figures in the rite by which excess in Soma drinking is cured, 
and at the Vajapeya, in both cases in rites which appear to owe their present 
form to priestly action. There is, however, enough evidence to indicate that 
the corresponding Avestan Hurd was used in the offering. 

Oldenberg ! is inclined to suggest that the plant was never very popular : 
that it really took the place of the old Indo-European mead,? and that 
therefore it was traditionally the subject of sacred use and appreciation with- 
out having any very real claim to pleasantness of character. It is possible 
that this was so, but it is not very natural, and it seems more reasonable to 
suppose that the mead of the older period was fully replaced by a really 
pleasant drink. The term Madhu, which is properly honey, is applied to it in 
the Rigveda, though not in the Avesta: the origin of the use is uncertain : 
it is especially connected in the mythology with the Acvins, and in point of 
fact it seems to have been originally offered to them in the Dadhigharma 
offering, though in the ritual as recorded the offering is practically confined to 
milk.? It is possible, therefore, that in point of fact honey as well as milk 
might be mixed with the Soma, though it is also true that the term ‘ honey ’ in 
the Veda is applied in the most promiscuous way as to the milk or butter of 
the cow, or to the waters of the rain. On the whole, however, we are hardly 
entitled to doubt that the drink was originally a really pleasant one: in the 
course of time the long distance from which the shoots had to be brought may 
easily have made it less attractive, as it certainly encouraged the use of 
various substitutes described in the ritual text-books. 

There is no ground on which any totemist nature can be applied to the 
Soma sacrifice :* much as the Brahmans speculated on the question,® there 
is no real proof that the offering ever really lost its true character, that of the 
offering to a god, in the main Indra, of the intoxicating and exhilarating 
drink, and the share in the drink by the priest. The killing of king Soma in the 
pressing, the eating of the substance of the moon, were no doubt seen by the 
ingenuity of the Brahmans, but these are speculations, not Vedic religion. 

In some cases it is true that we find alleged sacrifices of things which cannot 
be regarded as eatable or indeed of any use to the gods at all. In these cases 
the explanation is simple : a magic rite is dressed up as an offering: if a man 
seeks a hundred years, the normal term of life, and offers a hundred nails of 


' Rel. des Veda’, pp. 366 ff. 
* Feist, Kultur der Indogermanen, pp. 257, 


Aryans took over the drink from the 
aborigines of Iran, whence its popular 


3 


356. -In Greece wine replaced, under 
the influence of the Thracian Dionysos 
cult, mead as asacred drink. Wine and 
blood are closely connected in Greek 
and Roman ritual alike. 


Garbe, ZDMG. xxxiv. 319 ff.; ef. Hille- 


brandt, op. cit.i. 238 ff. Henry (L’ Agni- 
stoma, pp. 472 ff.) thinks that the 


but yet not orthodox nature is derived. 
Cf. Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, 
pp. 70 ff. 


* Henry, L’ Agnistoma, pp. 470 ff. Keith, 


Taittiriya Samhita, i. pp. exix—exxi. 


5° These speculations (Lévi, La doctrine du 


sacrifice, p. 169) have misled Hubert 
and Mauss, Année sociol. ii. 129 ff. 


Chap. 18] The Materials of the Sacrifice 285 


Khadira wood, he turns a magic rite into a sacrifice pro forma:} similarly, 
if he offers manure to produce plenteousness in cattle,” or gives the sacrificer 
the strength of a lion, wolf, and tiger by mixing in the oblation at the Sautra- 
mani hairs of these animals. Such cases are instructive as they show that the 
idea that the horse sacrifice might in itself merely be intended to secure to the 
sacrificer the strength and swiftness of the horse is by no means absurd or 
unreasonable, even if it is not quite a complete view of the rite. 


§6. Fire and Sacrifice 


The constant interrelation of magic and religion in the Vedic cult is seen 
in its most complete form in the position of the fire, which serves the double 
end of the mode in which the sacrifice is brought to the gods, and of the most 
effective agency for the banning of evil spirits. The Vedic hymns show clearly 
enough the enormous value of the fire for the driving away of the Raksases, 
and the ritual bears this out in the most marked manner. There is lighted a 
special fire, the Sitikagni, in place of the normal fire for the woman in child- 
birth: it is not used for any offering except for the fumigation of the newly 
born infant and the warming of dishes, but its object of driving off evil spirits 
is attested by the list of evil spirits who are banned in the ritual.4 The hair- 
cutting of the child is likewise performed to the west of a fire, which is not 
used for any offering, though utensils of the rite are put around it.5 The 
teacher initiates his pupil and girds on the sacred girdle, which marks his 
second birth, in the presence of a fire,® but in this case the making of an offering 
in it shows the tendency to mingle religion and magic: the recitation goes on 
in the presence of a fire. Such a fire is absolutely essential, when the passages 
recited are of special importance and therefore holiness.* The consecration 
of the offerer of Soma takes place before a fire; after a death, fire is used to 
drive away the evil powers, fire is used even in battle,® the third of the holy 
fires of the ritual seems to have been intended from the first to drive away 
evil spirits: the south is the region of the Fathers and of the demons ® akin 
to them, and, when it is being used for offerings to the Fathers, a brand is taken 
out from it to drive away the evil spirits, which seek to have a share in the 
sacrifice.!° 

A further important function of the fire as used at the ritual is cathartic 
in a different way: at the end of the offering it is desirable to remove from 
possibility of human contact the apparatus of the sacrifice, which has been 
filled by its use at the sacrifice with a superhuman character and danger. The 


1 GGS. iv. 8. 11, 12. (Arische Urzeit, pp. 356-61) finds 
2 GGS. iv. 9. 13, 14. Greek fire and some sort of powder in 
3 Weber, Ind. Stud. x. 350. the Rigveda! 

‘ HGS. ii. 3; cf. BhGS. i. 26. * CB. iv. 6. 6. 1, as the region where the 
5 CGS. i. 28. sun at the winter solstice seems to be 
* CGS. ii. 7. about to die; Henry, La magie dans 
1 CGS. ii. 1.28; PB. xxi. 2. 9. VInde antique, p. 162, n. 1. 


® Weber, Ind. Stud. xvii.180. Brunnhofer + K(S.iv.1.93; VS. ii. 30. 


286 Vedic Ritual [Part III 


strew of grass, which covers the altar, is burnt, and the same mode of disposal 
is applied to the Svaru or chip of wood, which is used for several mystical 
purposes at the animal offering, the ointment used for the anointing of the 
piler of the fire altar, the twig with which at the new and full moon offerings 
the calves are driven away from the cows which are to give the milk, the spits 
used at the animal sacrifice for holding the pieces of the victim: the idea 
animating these usages, and the parallel one of burying such dangerous 
objects, is illustrated very clearly 1 by the rule that the spit which has been 
used for the heart of the viétim, the seat of life, must not be laid on the earth 
or water, but must be buried in secret, the burier turning away without looking 
back. A further kind of purification is the final bath at the end of the offering 
and the use of washing: the sense of cleansing and destroying is seen in the 
practice of letting things float away on water. 

In addition to these uses the practice observed in the burning of the 
omentum in the first place for the deities, in order at least in part to convey a 
pleasant savour, must be reckoned as a function of the fire, and further there 
must be borne in mind the case where the fire itself was adored: the natural 
way of serving the fire was, and must have been, to offer the oblations directly 
in it, and thus to let the god taste in actual presence the gifts of his adorers. 

These different uses of the fire suggest the process by which the practice of 
sacrifice among the Iranians came to be changed in the Vedic period. The 
evidence of Herodotos ? we have no ground to doubt, and he is quite clear that 
the Persians used no fire: the victim was cut up, and the flesh laid down on 
grass, the Magos recited over it what he calls a Theogony, and after a short 
time the sacrificer took away the flesh and did what he liked with it. The 
grass on which the victim is laid is beyond possibility of doubt the strew, 
Barhis, of India: the Avestan name Baresman is undoubtedly cognate, 
though differently formed, and the Avesta used of it the expression fra-star, 
‘spread out’, which is the Vedic str. But in the Avesta, for reasons which we 
do not know, the strew became a bundle of grass tied together, which is used 
for various purposes.? In the Rigveda the strew is clearly often still thought 
of as the place to which the gods come to receive the offerings,* but the fire has 
its essential place within the altar, ready for the burning of the offerings. 
Hence we meet that constant confusion noted already in the conceptions of 
the functions of Agni: he is bidden on the one hand to carry the offerings to 
the god : in the other he is to invite them to come and to sit down on the strew 


1 CB. iii. 8.5.9 f.; ApCS. viii.23.10; KS. 198, 408) holds that the old Iranian 
vi. 8. 3; Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, practice was perverted by the non- 
p- 346, n. 2. Iranian Magoi, but this theory is most 

2 1.182; Strabo, xv. 8. 18, 14, p.'782. For doubtful; see Keith, JRAS, 1915, 
many parallels, see von Schroeder, pp. 790-9. 
Arische Religion, ii. 314ff., 364 ff.; ‘* Ovid (Fast. vi. 307) recognizes this as the 
cf. Herodotos, iv. 60; for Germany, old Latin belief; Warde Fowler, Re- 
Mogk, Germ. Myth., p. 165. ligious Experience of the Roman People, 


* Moulton (Early Zoroastrianism, pp. 68, p. 193. Cf. Keith, JHS, xxxvi. 109, 


Chap. 18] Fire and Sacrifice 287 
to partake of the offerings: the two ideas are actually found in the same hymn. 
The character of the strew is seen also in the rule that the gifts to the gods are 
first deposited on it, and that anything which falls upon it is not counted as 
wasted ? and so unfit for offering. The exact form of the process of develop- 
ment by which the fire came to be treated as the normal mode of the offering 
to the deity is uncertain: the making of a sweet odour may have been 
adopted, even when the gods were still supposed to come to the strew, in order 
perhaps to call their attention to the performance of the offering, and to 
attract them there; the strew and perhaps even the remains of the offering 
were burnt as too full of holy power to be safe to keep, or sometimes even in 
the case of the offerings to eat; the fire has a strong power to drive off demons, 
or the fire was the actual god to whom the offering was made, all reasons 
from which the new use could arise. But it must be remembered that it never 
became the sole manner of offering : * the throwing of gifts to water deities 
in the waters is a natural and common use; the placing of food in pits for the 
dead is a very old and common usage; the offerings to Rudra and other 
demoniac figures may be placed in ant-heaps, a sort of natural entrance to the 
earth, or hung on trees, or even merely thrown in the air. 

The Vedic ritual, however, is long past the period when the use of fire 
originated : the Crauta ritual demands not one but three fires, and the time 
when the three were the mere expansion of the one is far behind the Rigveda : 
we find already there a distinction between the ordinary fire and the three 
fires of the more elaborate ritual.® Each householder is bound by the ritual 
texts, if he be pious, to keep one fire and in it each day to perform the cult 
of the house: the rich, nobles and princes, and even men of lower status, who 
can afford it, maintain in the same way a set of three fires, and with them a 
number of priests who are essential to the carrying on of the cult. In both 
cases certain ceremonies may be performed, and indeed ought to be performed, 
the offering night and morning of the Agnihotra, the new and full moon 
. sacrifices, and the difference in the two modes of performance is one only 
of elaboration. Many other kind of cereal and animal offerings are also 
available for performance in both ways, but the family rites proper, those 
deeply affecting private matters, are only allowed to be performed in the 
domestic fire, while on the other hand the Soma sacrifice cannot be performed 
without the whole of the three fires. The great sacrificer therefore has the 
three fires beside the domestic fire : the older position that on great occasions 


A wii, 11. 5. HGS. ii. 9.5. Forthe practice of hang- 
BEES OV1. OGe.d- ing gifts to deities of fertility on trees, 
3 On the Bali type of offering see especially ef. Cook, Zeus, i. 533, 592 ; Helm, Alt- 


Arbman, Rudra, pp. 68 ff.; for Ger- 
many, see Helm, Aligerm. Rel.i. 244 f., 
294. Throwing in the airis appropriate 
for celestial deities ; thus the Mongolian 
milk offering to the sun is thus per- 
formed, Ratzel, Vdélkerkunde, i. 649. 


4 KCS. i. 1. 16; ix. 3.7; v. 10. 13, 18; 


germ. Rel. i. 244 f. Hubert and Mauss 
(Année sociol. ii. 75, 76) ascribe to 
offerings by precipitation the character 
of the expulsion of evil. 


* Ludwig, Rigveda, iii. 355; Oldenberg, 


SBE. Sxk. Pr x, Heres 


288 Vedic Ritual [Part III 


the domestic fire was divided into three is suggested quite irresistibly by the 
name of the one of the three fires, which occurs in the Rigveda, the Garha- 
patya, which means clearly the fire of the householder, and must have derived 
its name from the domestic fire, but it had disappeared before the tradition 
begins. It is a natural conjecture that it was in the Soma ritual that the 
origin of the fires developed, but it is not capable of proof.t Nor is there any 
evidence at all that the three fires represent an amalgamation of different 
forms of fire worship.?, The number suggests such a conclusion, but the mere 
fact of the number is of course not sufficient evidence and of other proof none 
is forthcoming. 

Of the three fires the Garhapatya alone was continually maintained : 
the other fires, the Ahavaniya and the Daksina, were derived from it, and the 
leading forward of the fire is already referred to in the Rigveda, though it is 
not possible to prove that the process was identical with that applied in the 
ritual.2 The central position of the Garhapatya is also to be seen in its relation 
to the man who goes on a journey: he takes formal leave of it first and then 
of the Ahavaniya, on his return he as solemnly greets first the Ahavaniya, and 
then the Garhapatya.4’ The Ahavaniya, with which Hillebrandt seeks to 
identify the Vai¢vanara of the Rigveda, is the fire for the offering, not that, as 
a Brahmana says, in which the cooking is done, but that in which the cooked 
food is made over to the gods: the Garhapatya therefore serves to cook the 
food and to warm the dishes, an act which seems clearly both in its nature for 
which no practical purpose is seen, and through the assertion that thus the 
demons are destroyed, to have been a piece of magic.® But the relations of 
the two fires are not in practice so simple as this: there are cases in which 
the functions are inverted.® The third fire is the Daksinagni, also called the 
Anvaharyapacana because the sacrificial fee for the new and full moon sacri- 
fices, which was called Anvaharya, was cooked on it. This fire was probably 
in its origin, as shown by its place at the south, intended to drive away by its 
flames the evil spirits and the souls of the dead, but it was natural that it 
should serve also for offerings to such spirits, though in the case of the Fathers 
pits were also used. We are expressly told that the fire served to avert danger 
from the Fathers,’ and in the rite of the royal consecration a brand is taken out 
of this fire, and used as the place for an offering to drive away evil spirits, and 
in the same rite another fire-brand is taken out and an offering made on it to 
Nirrti.6 The Daksinagni is also used both at the monthly offerings to the 


1 Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda*, p. 349, n. 3; ’ Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. ii. 97 ff. 


Knauer, Fesigruss an Roth, p. 64. (CBviloted ioe 

2 Ludwig, Rigveda, iii. 356. Three is a ° CB.i. 7. 3. 27; iii. 8.1.7; Weber, Ind. 
sacred number, because of its being the Stud. x. 327, n. 5. 
first expression of plurality and in- °* (CB. i. 7. 3. 26 ff.; KS. i. 8. 34, 35, 
divisible, and the mere growth in &e 


elaboration may have produced the 7 CB.ii.3.2.6; CCS.ii.14.3; 15.4. 
three; cf. Meyer, Gesch. d. AUP 'IT.i. * CB. v. 2.4.15; 8.2. 
p- 588. 


Chap. 18] Fire and Saecrtfice 289 


Fathers, and at the annual offering connected with the Sakamedhas, the 
third of the four-month sacrifices of the Crauta ritual. 

The rules for the steps to be taken to set up the three fires or the house- 
holder’s single fire are many and minute, but of little general importance : it 
is precisely in minutiae that the genius of the Brahmans shows itself to its 
complete extent, but, as in the case of the Roman priesthood, without gain 
to religious conceptions. The two normal methods are the old-fashioned one 
of producing the fire from the fire sticks, a process which is of immemorial 
antiquity in India,? and the obtaining of the fire from the fire maintained 
by a great sacrificer or wealthy master of cattle, the chief kind of Vedic 
wealth : in the first case the fire is new and pure, in the second it bears with it 
the associations of ceremony or of wealth or both. In the case of the house- 
hold fire it is often preferred to take it from the last fire tended by the house- 
holder as a Brahman student, thus doubtless preserving the continuity of his 
holiness, or in the alternative from the fire with which his marriage ceremonies 
were performed, and which therefore is a suitable fire for the continuance of 
the rites arising from his married state. But in the case of the four-month 
offerings, and the Soma sacrifice as at the animal offering, it is the practice to 
produce by friction a new fire and unite it with the Ahavaniya, in order 
doubtless to refresh it and make it strong. In this usage may be seen the 
remnant of an idea that the fire grows from time to time tired, and should 
annually be refreshed by being superseded by a new fire. The evidence for 
such a belief being really held in any strong way in the Vedic period is, how- 
ever, very weak: Hillebrandt’s * suggestions that once a year the fire was 
normally relit rests on combinations which are without any value. The chief 
occasion recognized by the ritual for the setting up of new fires was when it was 
found that the existing fires were not bringing good fortune to the offerer. For 
this occasion the rite of re-establishment, Punaradheya, was prescribed. 


§7. The Performers of the Sacrifice 


As we have seen, it is an essential part of the Vedic sacrifice that it is a 
sacrifice for an individual, the Yajamana,* or sacrificer, who provides the 
means for the sacrifice, and above all the rich rewards for the priests. The 
king is naturally the chief of sacrificers, for him alone such sacrifices as the 
royal consecration could be offered, but there are others, members of the royal 
house, high officers and soldiers among the Ksatriyas, rich merchants or 


KGSvivel, 25) Vv. 8. 6. 
2 Frazer, The Magic Art, ii. 248; Cook 


sacrifice brahmanique (Louvain, 1908) ; 
Oldenberg, Archiv f. Religionswissen- 


(Zeus, i. 325 ff.) traces to this the Pro- 
metheus myth, comparing pramantha 
with Zeus Pramantheus of Thourioi, 
but this is not plausible ; for Prome- 
theus cf. Keith, JRAS, 1916, pp. 553 ff. 


8 Ved. Myth. ii. 77 ff. 
* Oltramare, Le réle du Yajamdna dans le 


19 [mo.s. 31] 


schaft, vii. 222-4, who very properly 
insists that the priest differs from the 
sacrificer mainly in the fact that by 
reason of his office he has less need of 
elaborate ritual preparation than the 
lay sacrificer. In the actual rite he is 
as much as the priest made divine. 


290 Vedic Ritual [Part III 


agriculturists, and also, we should certainly add, rich Brahmans themselves. 
After making all allowances for exaggeration, the gifts to the Brahmans must 
often have resulted in the accumulation by a Brahman of great wealth which 
would pass on to his son, and which in view of the conceptions of the Brahmans 
could certainly not be better spent than in the performance of sacrifice. But 
even in the case of the king, the sacrifice is for the prosperity of the king, 
and only incidentally for the prosperity of the realm and people: the prayer 
of the royal consecration shows this, and still more markedly the prayer of the 
horse sacrifice, which in effect is the real purpose of that sacrifice, and not a 
thank-offering or mere celebration of the success of the king: the Adhvaryu 
prays,! ‘ In holiness may a Brahman be born, full of holy radiance. In the 
kingly power be born a prince, a hero, a bowman, piercing with shafts, a 
mighty warrior. May the cow be rich in milk, strong the draught ox, swift 
the steed, fruitful the woman, eloquent the youth. May a hero son be born 
to the sacrificer. May Parjanya grant rain at all time according to our desire. 
May the corn ripen’. The bulk of the people are not even mentioned, but 
their pursuits, agriculture and the care of cattle, are alluded to. 

The position revealed by the ritual seems hardly to be natural: it would 
certainly be expected that there should be some recognition of the sacrifices 
of the tribe, and the scant traces of an Agni Sabhya and Avasathya, which are 
adduced by Hillebrandt ? as proving the existence of tribal sacrifices, are a 
poor substitute for the evidence which should be forthcoming. We cannot, 
however, doubt that the Vedic attitude to the clan is unnatural and is a sign 
of developed ritual, not of primitive relations. There is but one exception 
to the rule that the sacrifice is for an individual in the Sattras, ‘ sacrificial 
sessions ’, long sacrifices extending as much as and even over a year, in which 
the sacrificers are the whole body of Brahmans officiating, the performance of 
such sacrifices being only possible when all are Brahmans: in that case the 
rule is that the whole of the merit of the offering belongs to them all, while 
any evil done belongs to the one who does it. It is possible that we have the 
record here of an older period of family offerings,® but it is far from certain that 
this is so, and it is not clear whether the Rigveda 4 really knows of such rites : 
if not they must be priestly inventions, as in many respects they most certainly 
are, representing the imaginations of a priesthood, which desired nothing 
better than to spend its time in the technique of a curious and complicated 
ritual. 

In so developed a condition of religious practice it is not surprising to find 
that the priests had already made themselves indispensable at the Crauta 
offerings: ° the householder might perform many of the domestic services 
himself, if he preferred to do so, and the poor man must have been in this 
position, but the Crauta sacrifices demanded a priest or often several priests. 
a VS4xxli.223 TS, viiu.b.18 ss KSAcv. v. / 4) ving 88518. 

14; MS. iii. 12. 6. 5 Cf. Hubert and Mauss, Année sociol. ii. 52, 


* Ved. Myth. ii. 118-26. who give Hebrew and Greek parallels. 
* Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, p. 371. 


Chap. 18] The Performers of the Sacrvfice 291 
It is beyond doubt that in the time of the Rigveda the priesthood was normally 
hereditary : we have no material for a history of the growth of the special 
connexion of the families mentioned in the Rigveda such as the Vicvamitras, 
Vasisthas, Atris, Bharadvajas, with the sacrifice : we may assume that at a 
period when the simpler relations of life prevailed, some family became 
associated with the ritual through the skill of one of its members or some 
possession of unusual powers, but that period lies far behind the Rigveda, 
especially if we believe as is quite possible that a priesthood arose in the Indo- 
European ! period. But these families differ essentially in some respects from 
parallel institutions in other Indo-European lands, showing that the Indo- 
European idea of priesthood cannot have been highly developed. There 
is no trace among them of the characteristics of the sacred colleges of the 
Romans, like the Arval Brothers or the Salii, charged with the oversight of 
definite parts of the public sacrifices, for there were no public sacrifices. Nor 
again are they like the Greek families which had hereditary priesthoods, often 
recognized by the state as at Eleusis, for these again had definite gods or rites 
to care for, while the Vedic families in the main dealt with the same kinds of 
rites, the differences between families in the times of which we know being in 
detail rather than in general aspect. Doubtless the different families were 
originally marked out by much more serious differences in cult than those 
which we can verify : the whole process of the relation of the Rigveda and 
of the ritual suggests syncretism on a large basis, but the possibility of the 
development of the distinct priesthoods of Greece and Rome was in all pro- 
bability hampered and finally prevented by the lack of the temple, and of the 
organization of public worship by the state. The state is a much more per- 
manent instrument than any private men or kings could be: the Vedic 
kingship was, it is certain,? far from assured, by reason of foreign war and 
internal dissension, and the priests could not therefore gather as a standing 
priesthood around the royal house. Nor, to do them justice, do the priests 
seem to have desired to do so: the impression left by the Rigveda and the 
ritual alike is that priests were fond of wandering from place to place, per- 
forming rites for now this patron, and now that, a fact which probably 
explains how the innovations discovered from time to time by individuals had 
comparatively little chance of affecting seriously the main body of the ritual, 
which has come down to us in essentially the same shape, despite endless 
variation in unimportant minutiae. The radical changes, if any, perished 
with their inventors, or at best soon after. 


1 Hirt, Die Indogermanen, pp. 514 ff.; times. Inter alia this theory rests on 


Carnoy, Les Indo-Européens, pp. 235 ff.; 
Feist, Kultur der Indogermanen, p. 
355. Meyer (Gesch. d. Alt. I. ii. pp. 
870, 871, 916, 917) holds that the 
Indo-Europeans had probably already 
magicians, but no priesthood proper, 
which developed itself in Indo-Iranian 


19* 


the false view that a magician is the 
first priest as held by Frazer, The Magic 
Art, i. 371 ff., 420ff.; Henry, La 
magie dans Inde antique, pp. 34 ff. 


* Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Index, ii. 


210 ff. 


292 Vedic Ritual [Part III 


One priest alone seems to have been definitely attached to the king, and 
less often to other rich persons of the warrior or the agricultural and trading 
classes, Ksatriya or Vaicya. This was the Purohita, praepositus, who was 
charged with the general control of the offerings to be performed in households, 
which were large enough to maintain a considerable body of priests, and to 
hire others for special rites. As a rule there can only have been one Purohita 
who probably acted as long as he and the king were alive and on good terms : 
we hear, however, of changes of Purohita, as that of Vicvamitra for Vasistha, 
with the result of the effort of the rejected rival to overthrow the king by 
bringing a coalition of ten princes against him,! and there is no Vedic evidence 
to show that the later practice, which made the priesthood hereditary in the 
family of the priest prevailed, though one Purohita in some cases at least 
evidently served more than one prince in succession, or even according to the 
later texts one man might be Purohita of as many as three allied kings at once.? 
In this case, however, we may imagine that there were subordinate Puro- 
hitas also employed. The relation of king and Purohita was created by a very 
formal act in which the precise words of the wedding service were repeated,° 
and there is abundant evidence that the Purohita was in religion and civil 
affairs the alter ego of the king.* The law books ° make him out to be the king’s 
teacher in sacred and other learning, his councillor in the performance of all 
his duties, the dispenser of justice in the place of the king, and prone to inter- 
fere in royal successions: popular tales represent the evil Purohita as bringing 
to ruin the kingdom as the good preserves it, and the Rigveda ® already makes 
the prosperity of the whole realm depend on him. It may be taken as certain 
that he performed all the domestic ritual of the king’s household, with its 
many formulae and magic rites’ to secure the success of the king’s under- 
takings in war and peace, the correctness of his judgements, and the prosperity 
of his subjects: we see clearly from the Rigveda *® that the Purohita was 
expected to be in the battle to secure victory, not by arms, but by the weapons 
of his magic power; the Atharvaveda ® preserves a battle spell used by a 
Purohita in fight, and the Rigveda 7° tells how the Purohita Devapi won rain 
by a spell. The Brahmanas represent the gods defeated by the Asuras as 
rushing to Brhaspati, who is the divine Purohita, and asking him to devise a 
new rite to overcome the Asuras, which he very properly at once does. More- 
over, in the address to Agni when he is invoked as having aforetime favoured 
1 RV. vii. 18 and 33; Hopkins, JAOS. xv. Die kénigliche Gewalt. 


259 ff.; Oldenberg, ZDMG. xlii. 205 ff.;  ° iv. 50. 8. 
Egveda-Noten, ii. 16-18; Macdonell 7’ Henry, La magie dans V’Inde antique, 


and Keith, Vedic Indez, ii. 275; Bloom- pp. 34, 38, 146 ff.; Bloomfield, Athar- 
field, Rig-Veda Repetitions, pp. 646 f. vaveda, pp. 738-76; N. N. Law, An- 
See also JB. iii. 199-202 for the story of cient Indian Polity, pp. 152 ff. 
Kutsa and Upagu. Peabo hey 
* Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Indez,ii.5-8. ° iii. 19; Kaug. xiv. 22, 23. 
3 AB. viii. 27. 10 x. 98; cf. Oldenberg, ZDMG. li. 274; 
4 AB. viii. 24; CB. iv. 1. 4. 5, 6. Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Indez, i. 


5 Cf. Hopkins, JAOS. xiii. 151 ff.; Foy, 377 f. 


Chap. 18] The Performers of the Sacrifice 293 


the ancestor of the invoker, when a king is the sacrificer, the name of his 
Purohita’s ancestor is used in place of his own: the Purohita must take part 
in offerings made to undo errors of the king in his capacity as criminal judge,! 
and in the sacrifice of the horse certain libations must be offered, according to 
some authorities, in the house of the Purohita.? 

From the Purohita must be distinguished the ordinary offering priest, and 
his relation to them may be assumed to have been that suggested by his name : 
he was the superintendent who took the care of the offerings, and saw that 
they were duly carried out. But it is obvious that he might, as a Brahman and 
as competent ex hypothesi to supervise every rite, undertake some part him- 
self, and we have every reason to think that he did so. In the case of Devapi 
he was not only Purohita, but at the sacrifice performed by him as a rain spell 
he acted as the Hotr priest: similarly Agni is Purohita as well as Hotr 
priest, and the two divine Hotrs who are invoked in the Apri litanies are also 
called the two Purohitas.* That this was the older rule, seems suggested by 
the fact that the Hotr was clearly in the time of the composition of the poetry 
of the Rigveda the really important priest, and that the Purohita would 
naturally take his office, as it was taken in some cases by the sacrificer himself.® 
With the growth of the ritual, however, and its increasing complication, a 
sure sign that the poetry was ceasing to be the main point of interest to the 
priest, it was only natural that the overseer of the sacrifice should become a 
priest different from the Hotr, namely the Brahman priest to whom in the 
ritual as opposed to the Rigveda the duty of caring for the sacrifice as a whole 
is assigned. Hence we find that the Brahmanas assert that the Purohita is the 
Brahman priest, and that the Vasisthas as Purohitas and’ Brahmans are 
specially meritorious,® while the divine Purohita, Brhaspati, becomes the 
Brahman priest of the god in the technical sense of the term. But even then 
the Purohita seems not to have been tied down to any one function : he could, 
if he preferred, act as a Saman singer.’ 

In the later literature after the Vedic period the figure of the Purohita 
retains in even increased force the importance which it has for the Veda. Itis 
clear that in him we have the aggressive and active side of priestly interference 
in human affairs : the ordinary offering priest must be deemed in comparison 
to have been a technical priest, or scholar engaged in reflection, and the proud 
position asserted for priests generally never in fact was attained by them. The 
position of the Purohita therefore never essentially affected the priesthood as 
a whole, and it was made only possible by the existence when the practice 
developed of the hereditary priesthood and the belief that offerings required 
priestly intervention to be successful. The Purohita, therefore,® is not to be 


1 VDS. xix. 40. 4 RV. x. 66.13; 70. 7. 

2 CB. xiii. 4. 4. 1. So at the Rajastya ‘° Ap(S. xii. 17.2; GGS.i. 9.9. 
(TS. i. 8. 9) the Brahman in whose ° AB. vii. 26; TS. iii. 5. 2.1; Gelidner, 
house sacrifice is made is probably the Ved. Stud. ii. 144 ff. 
Purohita. SAE Dah Cten tel 

eV al eile. sit llelict Valls 2; Gol. 5 Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda*, pp. 375 ff. 


294 Vedic Ritual [Part IIL 


treated as more than an incidental factor in the growth of the caste system, 
and it must be remembered that in the time of the later literature the whole 
aspect of the priesthood was profoundly affected by the existence of temple 
worship with its apparatus of bodies of priests and the growth of traditional 
practices. 

Of the ordinary priest we have, as we have seen, a good many details in 
the Rigveda : specially often do we hear of seven Hotrs, who presumably must 
correspond to the seven Seers whom the Rigveda! also mentions. This list 
may be given by detail in one passage of the Rigveda where Agni is identified 
with the Hotr, the Potr, the Nestr, the Agnidh, the Pracastr, the Adhvaryu, 
and the Brahman as well as with the householder himself. The same list, save 
for the Upavaktr, who seems to be identical in essence with the Pracastr, 
appears as the list of priests to whom the Achavaka, a later addition to the 
priesthood, addresses a request to be admitted to share the Soma.? Another 
list, given in connexion with the morning pressing of the Soma, is slightly 
different: it includes the Hotr, two Adhvaryus, two Pracastrs, Brahman, 
Potr, Nestr, and Agnidhra.* The second Adhvaryu is evidently an addition : 
in the later period he is the Pratiprasthatr ; the second Pracastr is similarly 
the Achavaka in the later ritual. The list also agrees, in the main but not 
completely, with the list of priests, who have cups and altars in the Soma 
sacrifice.4 The old list is comparable with the eight of the Avesta,® but the 
comparison is not in detail exact, and we may doubt whether we can safely 
assume more than a general similarity between the Indo-Iranian and the Vedic 
cult : the exact degree of the development of the separation of functions is 
not to be determined with certainty. The Hotr is clearly the Zaotar, the 
Agnidh has the same duty as the Atarevakhi’a, and the Potr as the Asnatare, 
the washer of the Soma. But it is impossible to find the counterpart to the 
singers of the Vedic ritual. 

The Hotr must from his name have been originally at once the performer 
of the offering and the speaker of any words which accompanied it, but the 
distinction between the two portions of the functions of the Hotr must have 
developed quite early, perhaps even before the close of the Indo-Iranian 
period. In the Vedic ritual text-books a fundamental distinction is drawn 
between two kinds of offerings, which are called Yajatayas and Juhotayas 
respectively: in the former there is but one speaker and actor, who is, however, 
called Adhvaryu, not Hotr, from the more important side of his functions ; 
in the latter there is, beside the Adhvaryu who performs the manual acts, the 
Hotr to recite. The extent of the function of the Hotr varies very greatly : 
in a large number of offerings the only verses which he has to repeat are 
the Puronuvakya and the Yajya. The first is a verse addressed to the god 


Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Indez, ii. (eo GuSCosixaloet ie 

5ff.; N. N. Law, Ancient Indian * KCS.ix. 8. 8 ff. 

Polity, pp. 38 ff.’ “ Weber, Ind. Stud. x. 366, 377. 
Ahi See * Henry, L’ Agnistoma, pp. 477 ff. 


* KB. xxviii. 5; CCS. vii. 6.7; AGS. v. 


Chap. 18] The Performers of the Sacrifice 295 


inviting him to be present at the offering to be made to him ; the latter is said 
just at the end when the Adhvaryu is about to throw the offering into the fire ; 
after it the Hotr says the word Vausat, of doubtful sense and meaning,! and 
thereafter often a brief formula addressed to the god bidding him enjoy the 
offering, terminating with Vausat again, the whole phrase forming the 
“secondary Vasat’ (anu-vasatkdra) which is constantly referred to in the 
sacrifice. The Yajya verse is preceded by the word ye yajdmahe, and it is very 
possible that it is merely a development from it: but at least in the Rigveda 
there were series of such verses composed. The Puronuvakyas seem to have 
been later in development, though some may be seen in the Rigveda. In 
their place often are found longer recitations such as accompany the main 
offerings of the Soma: there is a peculiarity in the verses thus used which 
suggests that the ritual in its development still retained traces of its older form. 
In the hymns used are inserted Nivids, apparently also called Madas, which 
are invitations to the god with an enumeration of his titles to come and intoxi- 
cate himself with the Soma. These Nivids, as they are preserved to us, are 
of undoubtedly later composition than the hymns of the Rigveda, but it is 
perfectly reasonable to believe that in principle they represent the oldest form 
of the invitation to the gods.2, We may conceive a time when the Nivid and 
the mere formula ye yajdmahe represented the whole of the words of the Hotr, 
but we have no clear ground on which to trace the precise development of the 
form of the ritual. The Adhvaryu in his turn has a certain number of formulae, 
normally in prose, to repeat as the several acts of the sacrifice proceed, in 
order to avert evil and invoke prosperity, but his main duty must have at first 
been, and even in the later ritual was, the management of the practical part 
of the offering, the preparation of the cakes and the straining and purifying 
of the Soma, the arranging of the many utensils, and the actual pouring of the 
offerings in the fire appropriate to each. In this work he had the constant aid 
of the Agnidh, whose name denotes him as specially concerned with the 
kindling of the fire. This priest with the Adhvaryu, the Hotr, and the Brah- 
man to oversee it all, managed many of the lesser offerings, and he was 
specially in these cases concerned with the keeping of fire burning, but 
naturally did much else beside. The position in which he stood to the 
Adhvaryu is neatly shown by the procedure, which was gone through before 
the Hotr said his Yajya verse : he must be told to do so by the Adhvaryu, but 
before this takes place the Adhvaryu must address the Agnidh with the words, 
‘Om: make him hear’, to which the Agnidh replies solemnly, ‘ Be it so. 
Let him hear’. The episode is deliciously significant of the absurdities of the 
developed ritual. The close union of the two priests is perhaps the explana- 
tion of the two Adhvaryus in the list of priests already mentioned, though 
in the later tradition the second was the Pratiprasthatr. 


1 Cf. Foy, ZDMG. 1. 189; Wackernagel, ZDMG., xlii. 242 ff. 
Altind. Gramm. i. 41, 177 (for vaksat, * Hillebrandt, Neu- und Vollmondsopfer, 
* may he bear’). p- 94; Rituallitteratur, p. 99. 


* Cf. Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, p. 387; 


296 Vedic Ritual [Part III 


These priests sufficed for the new- and full-moon offerings, but for the 
animal offering the Hotr required an assistant, the priest called variously 
Upavaktr, Pracastr, and Maitravaruna. The first two names indicate his 
chief activity in the ritual, the giving of directions, called Praisas,1 to the 
priests, and this function he already exercised in respect of the Hotr as 
early as the Rigveda. The ritual prescribes that he should give to the Hotr 
his Praisa for the recitation of the Yajya, standing before him on the right 
hand of the Hotr’s seat, holding a staff, slightly bent forward. Moreover, at 
the animal sacrifice he shares the Hotr’s duties, often, when there are verses to 
be recited, taking the one and the Hotr the other.? In the case of the Soma 
sacrifice he has recitations of his own to perform, in large measure directed to 
Mitra and Varuna, from whom therefore he borrows his third name as ‘ (The 
priest) connected with Mitra and Varuna ’, and, as the root whence comes 
the name Pracastr, ‘ orderer’, is an appropriate term for the commands of 
these gods, the human priest may have borrowed this designation from the 
gods themselves, though this is rather conjectural.? What is much more 
certain is that the two divine Hotrs, of whom we hear in the Rigveda, are 
the heavenly representatives of the Hotr and the Maitravaruna. 

In the Soma sacrifice lie the functions of the Potr and the Nestr, who are 
included in the Rigveda list. The Potr is in the actual ritual a mere shadow, 
of no consequence or importance, whose former importance may be judged 
from his name and his obvious connexion with Soma Pavamana. The Nestr 
is also in the later ritual a priest with but one function of any interest or 
importance. It occurs in the course of the Soma rite, when an offering is made 
to Agni with the wives of the gods. The Agnidh, who in this case has to par- 
take of the Soma, sits in the lap of the Nestr, and thereafter the Nestr 
summons the wife of the householder, who then performs with the Udgatr a 
rite which is a mimicry of cohabitation and whose nature as a fertility spell 
was as clearly recognized by the ritual texts as by us.* The suggestion 5 that 
the rite is a barbarous one, and that the Nestr is an intrusion into the Vedic 
ritual from a non-Vedic source, is clearly an error, and ignores the fact that 
fertility magic is looked upon by primitive peoples with very different eyes 
from those of the present day. 

The remaining priest in the list of seven is the Brahman. It is uncertain 
exactly who is meant by this term, but the greatest probability is clearly that 
it is the Brahmanacchansin of the later ritual, who is also addressed as Brah- 
man and whose older name was clearly Brahman.® His duty in the later 
ritual is to be an assistant of the Hotr, and at the Soma sacrifice to recite 
a litany for Indra. The alternative view, that of Geldner,’ takes him to be 


1 For a collection see Scheftelowitz, Die ° K(S. ix. 8.11. 


Apokryphen des Rgveda, pp. 142-55. 7 Ved. Stud. ii. 145 ff. For Henry’s theory 
* Schwab, Altind. Thieropfer, p. 90. of the Brahman as the primitive 
* Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’*, p. 391. magician whence develops the priest 
* TS. vi. 5.8.6; CB. iv. 4. 2. 18. see below, Chap. 22, § 8. 
5 


Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth.i. 250, 261, n. 2. 


Chap. 18] The Performers of the Sacrifice 297 


in the Rigveda already the priest charged with the whole of the supervision of 
the ritual, and it is possible, though not certain, that already in the Rigveda 
in the latest parts such a priest was known. In the later ritual his place is 
one of the highest importance: he is set off against all the other priests as 
- equal in value to the whole of the rest of them: he says very little, and is 
mainly engaged in supervision seated in the place of the Brahman near the 
chief fire altar, by his silent meditation repairing every flaw in the sacrifice. 
The later nature of the office is also reflected in the tradition that the Vasisthas 
alone were the owners of a certain litany,? which has to be spoken by the 
Brahman at the offering: this points to the tradition of an invention in one 
family, which led in course of time to the gradual adoption of the use of such 
a priest by all the families. 

In the list of seven there is no mention of the Hotr’s counterparts, the 
Saéman singers, but they are elsewhere mentioned in the Rigveda, and the 
names of the Udgatr and Prastotr are mentioned,’ so that the omission of the 
Pratihartr may be merely accidental. The songs of the Saman singers are 
of a really primitive kind,‘ in that they are made up with all sorts of meaning- 
less syllables interjected among the words, in order presumably to fit them to 
the music of the song: the comparison of the chant to the revival ceremonies 
of American negroes is too attractive to be disregarded. The chants fall 
into two classes, those addressed to Soma Pavamana, which are the chants 
that they must first have been expected to sing: they differ in form markedly 
from the ordinary hymns of the Rigveda, and are also differentiated by their 
position in book ix. In addition to these, however, they chant songs for the 
ordinary gods, to whom the libations are offered at the three pressings of the 
Soma: the ritual demands a precise parallelism, each recitation of the Hotr 
being preceded by a chant, and the chant and recitation being closely allied 
by the use in the chant of sets of verses of the recitation. The arrangement 
is artificial and not early, as the inaccuracies in the ritual ® prove, and the 
absurdity of the theory of correspondence is proved by the case of the songs 
to Soma Pavamana which have no real connexion at all with the recitations 
of the Hotr, to which they are alleged to be a parallel. 

The evidence clearly does not allow us to say whether the Saman singers 
were, or were not, present in the earliest form of the Soma sacrifice: the 
absence of their names from the Avestan list and the list of the seven Hotrs 
might be cited in support of such a view, but at the same time the argument 
could not be pressed : the songs might easily have been chanted by some other 
priest—as by the Potr—before the Saman singers came into existence. 

The later ritual requires only the Adhvaryu for the Agnihotra offering 
performed daily ; for the piling or establishing of the fire, Agnyadheya, four 


Oe AED ee 4 Cf. Bloomfield, VOJ. xvii. 156-164; 
2 TS. iii. 5. 2. 1; Macdonell and Keith, JAOS. xxi. 50; Oldenberg, GGA. 1908, 
Vedic Indea, ii. 7. pp. 711 ff. 


3? RV. viii. 81. 5. 5 Weber, Ind. Stud. x. 874, n.3; 885, n. 1. 


298 Vedic Ritual (Part III 


priests, Hotr, Adhvaryu, Agnidhra, and Brahman; for the four-month 
offerings also the Pratiprasthatr; and for the animal sacrifice the Maitravaruna 
and Camitrs as aiders of the Adhvaryu. For the Soma sacrifice it prescribes 
sixteen, who are arranged as Hotr, Maitravaruna, Achavaka, and Gravastut ; 
Adhvaryu, Pratiprasthatr, Nestr, and Unnetr ; Udgatr, Prastotr, Pratihartr, 
and Subrahmanya ; and Brahman, Brahmanacchansin, Potr, and Agnidhra. 
The whole arrangement! is, however, artificial and worthless: the three 
assistants of the Brahman and the Nestr in practice are reckoned rather with 
the Hotr, and the aim at sets of four has spoiled the natural order. The 
Kausitakins curiously enough had seventeen priests, a view not approved by 
the other schools, which naturally saw no need for a priest who was merely 
to sit in the Sadas at the sacrifice,? a function clearly sufficiently provided for 
by the Brahman who had nothing else to do. 

In this ritual we find the fully developed form of what is already known to 
the Rigveda, the choosing of the priests by the offerer, who must satisfy him- 
self as to their capacities, if for no other reason than that, while he attains the 
fruit of the sacrifice, all the errors of the priests fall upon him, so that they can 
if they like ruin him at any moment by making deliberate blunders, as the 
Brahmanas tell them how to do if they so wish. In their turn they are entitled 
to ask the sacrificer questions and to make sure that he is a proper person to 
sacrifice for, and that other priests have not already been engaged in the 
offering and left it unfinished by reason of disagreement with the sacrificer. 
The point is of interest, as illustrating how firmly organized the Brahmans 
were on the best trade-union models. The sacrificer must be of the three 
highest castes; exceptions are of the rarest character, and mainly concern the 
makers of chariots, Rathakaras, who seem to have occupied at quite an early 
date a peculiar position, not included in the third caste but still distinctly 
superior to the Cidras, a fact which suggests that they were of inferior origin 
to the three castes, but by skill too important and useful to be neglected.? 

The evidence, however, is somewhat confusing. We find in Apastamba 4 
a form of words prescribed at the new- and full-moon offering in the case of a 
Cudra, where it seems that we are expected to see in the Cidra either a 
Rathakara or a Nisada, two special classes permitted a share in the sacrifice. 
A Cudra appears also at the Pitrmedha in the Catapatha Brahmana,’ and it is 
permitted to eat food from a carpenter (taksan), who, of course, is closely 
allied to the Rathakara. Acvalayana ® permits the carpenter to establish the 
sacred fire, and Bharadvaja expressly says that some permit this to the 
fourth caste, while others do not.’ The later theory § makes the Rathakara to 


1 Weber, Ind. Stud. x. 143 ff. is recorded in AB. vii. 27; Macdonell 
* Generically as in TS. vi. 5. 1. 4 a group of and Keith, Vedic Index, i. 120. 

priests bears the term Sadasya, but to ‘ i. 19.9. 

them the Kausitakins added another. ee xill, $853, 1159 MS.01) 40153 So xe LO. 
® Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Index, ii. ° ii. 1.18. 

203, 204. A classical example of dis- 1 See Caland’s tr. of Ap¢S., p. 136. 

agreement between priests andsacrificer * BDS.i. 17. 6. 


Chap. 18] The Performers of the Sacrifice 299 


be the son of a Vaicya by a Cidra mother. On the other hand Apastamba ! 
expressly contemplates any of the first three classes including in its ranks 
Rathakaras, which certainly seems an artificial view, in view of the compara- 
tively late period of that Sitra. The Nisédas who appear occasionally as per- 
mitted to have some concern in the sacrifice are reckoned by the ancient 
authority Aupamanyava as a fifth class, and they have some claim to be 
regarded as members of the pre-Aryan population who remained in a less 
dependent condition than the Cidras, presumably retaining their own tribal 
organization under the suzerainty of Aryan princes. 

In the later ritual the chief duties of the sacrificer himself were of an 
inferior type: he had certain formulae to repeat, he might perform the 
manual throwing of the offering in the fire, and he had various restrictions to 
undergo : his wife was in the same position, but her part in the rite was rather 
smaller than her husband’s: she was, however, clearly considered throughout 
to be concerned in the sacrifice, and a formal place is provided for her at the 
Soma sacrifice and still more clear is her participation in other offerings. The 
sacrificer had, however, the most important duty of dividing the sacrificial 
fees, or Daksinas, so called either from the literal fact that the gifts, usually 
of cows, were placed on the right side for the sacrificer to divide, or because the 
word Daksina from its literal sense had come to mean acceptable.* This duty 
is prescribed in precise terms with regard to the several offerings, and there is 
often an obvious attempt to make the reward fit the service which has taken 
place in respect of the nature of the gifts given, e.g. a black beast for an 
offering for the dead. It must remain doubtful to what extent we may not see 
in the Daksinas the alteration of the older practice of offering the things given 
at the sacrifice : the priests determined to keep them, and converted the sacri- 
fice into gifts to themselves. 

Of the additional priests at the Soma sacrifice none have much importance 
or interest : the Subrahmanya was introduced because of a particular formula 
only,* with which has been compared the Bahram Ya&t of the Avesta, and the 
Achavaka is of special interest only because he is so obviously an introduction 
when the ritual was well defined, as is practically admitted in the Brahmanas 
and in the ritual itself.® 


1 y,3.19. Cf. Buhler, SBE. xiv. p. xxxviii. SB.i.1; KB. xxvii. 6; Oertel, JAOS. 

2 Yaska, Nir. iii. 8. xviii. 84 ff.; Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. 

3 Macdonell and Keith, Vedic Indea, ii. iii, 209 ff., 298; Charpentier, Kleine 
203, 204; Bloomfield, Religion of the Beitriige zur indoiranischen Mythologie 
Veda, pp. 71 ff. (1911). 


‘ CB. iii.3.4.18 ; AB. vi.3; TB.iii.8.1.2; ° KB. xxviii.46 AB. vi. 14. 8. 


CHAPTER 19 
RITES ANCILLARY TO THE SACRIFICE 


§1. The Consecration 


Tue Diksa is a rite which has to be performed by the sacrificer and his 
wife before the Soma sacrifice.1 It is carried out in a hut near the fire: the 
sacrificer bathes, has his hair cut, is anointed, puts on a fresh garment, is 
girded with the sacred cord, and sits down on a black antelope hide, in which 
there resides, in the view of the tradition, holy power. His head is covered, 
an antelope horn is tied to his garment, and it is prescribed that, when he 
suffers from itch, he is to use that only with which to scratch himself. He 
sits in this condition in silence until night comes, when he drinks cooked 
milk, which is the food appropriate for the consecration, and then keeps awake 
all the night, or goes to sleep after commending himself to Agni to preserve 
him from evil spirits. He is also enjoined to stammer when he speaks, and to 
keep the three last fingers closed into his hand. Some authorities insist that 
he is to remain in this condition, until he is reduced to skin and bone and 
until the black in his eyes disappears: he is to be pure for the sacrifice only 
when he is reduced to complete exhaustion. The loneliness, the silence, the 
lack of food, are not however the only elements in the prescription: the 
heat is also indicated by the provision regarding scratching, reference to the 
sweating of the performer is made, and it is said that water will spoil the con- 
secration, Tapas ; the last term clearly means the process of heating, which is 
also said to be affected by any breach of the rules imposed. This Tapas is one 
of the earliest conceptions of the Rigveda : ? the power produced by it is great 
in the extreme, and it marks out seers like the Afigirases; through it a 
poet can behold the old creations of the Fathers, speech is born of Tapas, 
which procures dreams and which elevates man to the state that gods may 
enter in. If the king wrong a Brahman, then the Tapas of the Brahman is 
capable of ruining him. Indra was borne by Astaka by practising Tapas, by 
it also Indra won immortality. Prajapati before creation practises Tapas to 
bring about the desired result of power to create ; it is a significant case that 
once the stars come from him in this condition. Already in the Jaina litera- 


‘ Lindner, Die Diksd (Leipzig, 1878); Indien, pp. 55ff.; von Schroeder, 
Weber, Ind. Stud. x. 358 ff.; Olden- Arische Religion, ii. 249 (assimilation of 
berg, GGA. 1917, pp. 328 ff. ; Rel. des sun and heat, rain and water). 

Veda’, pp. 397 ff.; Hillebrandt, Ved. * viii.59.6; x.186.2; 154.2,4; 167. 1; 
Myth. i. 482 ff.; iii. 355; Hubert and 109.4; AV.iii. 10.12; xix. 56. 5 and 
Mauss, Année sociol. ii. 53 ff.; Hauer, often. 


Die Anfdnge der Yogapraxis im alten 


OE _ 


Chap. 19] The Consecration 301 


ture,’ the common feature of modern Indian thought, the ascetic who presents 
himself to the heat of four fires and the sun, is found, and the idea of the con- 
nexion ? of heat with creative power and ecstasy is clearly one of the most 
assured ideas of Indian thought. 

The Diksa has obvious affinities with the ceremonies, which all over the 
world have been used to spread that feeling of ecstasy which makes man akin 
to the divine, and of which the Bacchic rites of Greece present the most obvious 
and convincing classical parallel. The idea is found but rarely in the Rigveda 
but it is to be noted in one hymn of the tenth book,? in which is described the 
long-haired Muni, clad in dirty garments, who claims to speed along with the 
winds on the path of the Apsarases and the Gandharvas, to have entered into 
the winds leaving his body only for men to see, and who, it is clear, regards 
himself as quasi-divine for the moment. In that case there is no reference to 
Tapas, but the long unshorn hair and the dirty garments remind us of the 
plight of the unhappy sacrificer. At any rate it would be absurd to doubt 
for a moment that in this figure we have a case of the effort made to obtain 
religious exaltation, or that the attitude is similar to that of the medicine man 
of tribes in a lower stage of civilization. It is not, of course, in any sense 
irreligious or opposed to religious feeling : it is the same spirit as that of mysti- 
cism throughout all ages and among all peoples. The discomforts of the 
performance are merely intended to melt away the solid flesh, which retards 
the communion of the spirit with the divine. The wearing of the black 
antelope skin is a practice which is especially enjoined on the Brahman student, 
and it is natural to see in it some special connexion with the power to be 
derived from wearing such a skin. The sacrificer wears a pair of shoes of 
antelope hide.* The use of the horn of the antelope is parallel to its use for the 
pouring out of the mixture used for the anointing of the king.® The parts of 
the offering which fall down are offered to the Raksases under such a skin.® 
The actual intention is uncertain: the prohibition of the use of the hand to 
scratch is paralleled in many lands, especially in initiation ceremonies, and it 
is clearly due to the fact that the body is full of the divine essence, and that 
therefore contact with the hand is undesirable: a non-conducting material 
should be interposed. But the choice of a black skin also suggests that the 
idea of making the wearer invisible to the demons may have something to do 
with the use. The idea that the antelope is divine as a representative of any 
god cannot be proved or even made probable for this rite, and similarly there 
is no trace of totemism to be seen in regard to the antelope in Vedic literature. 


1 Bhagavati, ii. 1. 65. Mauss, Année sociol. ii. 100; below, 
2 Cook (Zeus, i. 28) suggests that Hera- Chap. 22, § 9. 
kleitos’s doctrine of heat as the world ‘ TS. v. 4. 4. 4. 
principle is connected with Zeus asthe ° (B. v. 4. 2.4, For the use of the horn 
burning sky or aether. generally cf. Evans, JHS. 1901, pp. 
3 RV. x. 1836; Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda’, 135 ff.; Cook, Zeus, i. 506 ff. 
pp. 404, 406; otherwise, Bloomfield, ¢ Hillebrandt, Neu- und Vollmondsopfer, 
JAOS. xv. 157 ff. Cf. Hubert and Dwlii. 


302 Vedic Ritual [Part III 


Probably enough there is here religious conservatism : the antelope hide is the 
natural garment of the early Vedic Indian, and the one worn by the student 
who is in a special condition of religious communion with the divine: these 
motives may go far to explain the use. 

There is, however, another element in the rite, which is emphasized by the 
Brahmanas, but denied as primitive by Oldenberg. It is that the per- 
formance is a new birth, that the performer is reduced to the condition of an 
embryo, and the use of milk, the stammering speech, the clenched fist, are thus 
explained. There can be really no doubt that the ceremony was meant by 
the Brahmans to convey and to have this effect, and the result of the consecra- 
tion in the case of one who was not a Brahman, was to convert him into a 
Brahman, not of course permanently, but for the time being. The Rigveda ! 
is one place seems perfectly clearly to allude to the rite as making the per- 
formers born, that is newly born again,” and while we may, if we like, say that 
the older idea was merely that of the production of religious ecstasy, still we 
have no right to deny that the rite was as early as the period of the Rigveda 
carefully remodelled so as to suit the idea intended to be seen in it by the 
Brahmans. An explanation of the stammering speech is offered by Olden- 
berg as indicating the moment when the ecstasy seizes on the offerer, but, 
though this may be paralleled with the broken utterances of the priestess of 
Delphi and elsewhere, the other interpretation deserves preference.® 

A very different theory of the whole rite is suggested by Hillebrandt,* who 
relies on the derivation of the word from dah, * burn’, in place of that from 
dac, *‘ serve a god’, or perhaps daks—preferred by Oldenberg. He therefore 
thinks that the Diksa was a voluntary death by fire, the desire to burn oneself 
to attain the heaven of Visnu, and adverts to the suicide by fire of Kalanos 
of Taksacila, which is recorded by the Greek writers. He admits, of course, 
that this is not the purpose of the rite as known to us, in which the offerer had 
no intention at all of departing from life, but undertook the offering in the 
hope inter alia of prolonging his days, and multiplying his possessions in this 
world, but he points out that Brahmana texts > lay down that the victim for 
Agni and Soma, which is offered after the Diksa, is not to be eaten, and that 
it is a buying off of one’s self, which he interprets to mean that the ceremony 
of offering this victim was ingeniously intended to redeem the man from death. 
The stammering speech of the consecrated man he explains in another way, 
from the offering of enemies to the gods, the stammering being the view 
taken of their strange and unintelligible speech. The evidence for this view is, 
however, clearly of the weakest kind: there is no trace of the practice of 
1 RV. vii. 33. 138; cf. AB. i. 8.22, &c. Cf. a death, JUB.iii. 9.4; 10.6. 

also RV. i. 164. 36 ff.; Hauer (op. cit., * Keith, Taittiriya Samhita, i. pp. exiii-exv. 

pp. 68 ff.) interprets the frog hymn ‘ Ved, Myth.i. 482; iii. 354 ff.; (Kl. Ausg.), 


(vii. 103) as alluding to the Diksa, and p. 138. 
finds in x. 106. 5 ff. specimens of the ‘* MS. iii. 7, 8;. AB. ii. 8. 11; KB. x. 3; 
stammering speech of the consecrated. Sect al el a6: 


* From another view-point consecration is 


Chap. 19] The Consecration 303 


voluntary religious suicide in the age of the Vedas : the pessimism which leads 
to this suicide is not, in historic times, known in the Veda, and the idea that 
as later! captured enemies were sacrificed to the gods is without any evidence 
for the Vedic age. The sanctity of the victim to the two gods is much more 
probably to be explained by the excess of divinity embodied in it, in view 
of the greatness of the two gods to whom it is dedicated, both of whom 
must be deemed to appropriate it for their own, and it must be remembered 
that the explanation of the offering being a redemption is merely a priestly 
speculation, not finally held valid by the Taittiriya Samhita. 


§2. The Avabhrtha 


As the Diksa is the beginning of the Soma sacrifice, so the end of it and also 
of many other offerings is the Avabhrtha, or ‘ concluding bath’.? The word is 
found already in the Rigveda,? and undoubtedly in the original sense, and the 
practice must therefore be assumed to have existed from the earliest period 
of the Vedic religion. The meaning of it is clear: it is the carrying down to 
the waters of the various things which are to be disposed of after the offering 
is over. The ceremony at the end of the Soma sacrifice is simple : the skins of 
antelope hide and the girdles, which the sacrificer and his wife have been 
wearing throughout the rite, are taken off, and cast into the water along with 
the utensils which have come into contact with the Soma and with the pressed 
shoots of the Soma plant. Then the two go into the water and rub the backs 
of each other : then they come out from the water, and thereupon put on fresh 
garments. The performance is made into a sacrifice by the fact that offerings 
are made and verses addressed to Varuna, claiming him as the possessor of 
many healing powers, imploring him to drive away hate, and to pardon sin. 
The bath itself is addressed as the cause of the removal of sin. But these 
forms are obviously mere cloaks for the fact that the washing is the chief 
thing, and that it concerns itself with the removal of the mysterious potency, 
which has clung since the Diksa to the sacrificer and his wife, rendering them 
unfit for normal human life. That this was realized by the priest is clearly 
proved by the language used of the rite: * the waters are distinctly said to 
remove the consecration and the Tapas, and it is stated that the sacrificer 
takes the consecration with him into the bath. The meaning is illustrated 
by the parallel procedure in the case of the undertaking of a vow of study by 
a Brahman. He then assumes a girdle, an antelope skin, and a staff, and at the 
end of the vow all these things are solemnly laid aside, and he takes a bath.® 


1 So King Jarasandha in the epic; Egge- vi. 10. 1; x. 8. 16 ff.; Hubert and 
ling, SBE. xliv. p. xxxvi, n. 1. For Mauss (Année sociol. ii. 86 ff.) give 
German parallels, see Dio Cassius, liv. Hebrew and Greek parallels and com- 
20; Tacitus, Ann. xiii. 57; Helm, pare the concluding service ofthe Mass. 
Aligerm. Rel. i. 293. 3 viii. 93. 23. 


2 Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda®, pp. 407-10; * MS. iii. 6.2; ApQS. xiii. 21. 3, 
ApS. viii. 7. 12 ff.; xiii. 19 ff.; KOS. * HGS,i.7.8; 9. 8-10. 


304 Vedic Ritual [Part II 


The nature of the bath is further elucidated by the fact that through the 
performance of ablutions in it the waters become charged with magic potency 
and power: thus at the end of the bath at the horse sacrifice, those who go in, 
though evil doers, are released from all their sins.! The bath too serves as the 
mode of driving out evil in a curious rite, which is recorded of the same sacri- 
fice : ? a man is driven into the water up to his mouth, and on his head offer- 
ings are made to Jumbaka, to death, and to the slaying of an embryo: theman 
is of an ugly appearance, and is said in the Catapatha Brahmana to be the 
symbol of Varuna. It is clear from the notice of a Sitra that the real meaning 
of the ceremony, which ends with the man being driven away, is that he is a 
scapegoat, who bears with him the sins of the community, but who is also 
purified from them in some measure by the driving into the water. The 
offering on his head may well be derived from the mere mode of transferring * 
the sin by touching him on such a part as the head, or merely be based on the 
fact that an offering to Varuna was an essential part of the rite for the priest, 
and that the obvious place to make it was in the man who had the sins of the 
people upon him. That a human sacrifice is meant, as was imagined by Weber,’ 
who thought that the potency of the bath to remit sin was due to this, is 
obviously wrong: there is no trace in any of the texts of the death of the man, 
who is on the contrary clearly driven away ° as an essential part of the rite. 


§3. Taboos 


While the bath has the power of removing what is attached to a man’s 
person, and thus is often used before undertaking a rite, as before the Diksa 
itself by the sacrificer, by bridegroom and bride before marriage, and by a 
woman after the spell to produce offspring has been performed for her,® it is 
also necessary to avoid its use to prevent the removal of the holy power, 
which has been attained by some means or other. The theory would therefore 
demand that, after the initiation of the Brahman student, he should not take 
a bath until the final bath, so as to preserve his undoubted condition of 
holiness to the end, as the sacrificer can do in the case of the sacrifice, but 
obvious practical considerations rendered it impossible to carry that out in the 
times recorded for us. Though the more recent ascetics in India often never 
wash at all, and the seclusion of girls from ordinary life before and during 
puberty is practised for long periods in some lands, the use of the bath was not 
normally in the slightest degree forbidden to the Vedic student.” But we hear 


1 Above, Part III, Chap. 18, §2; KCS. xx. all likelihood permanent, though Egge- 
8.17518: ling thinks he may have been expected 
SCE. XilsonGsanel Bollingen os to live an anchorite’s life. But he had 
* So in the ancient Hebrew rite of consecrat- been bought to perform the rite for 
ing a thing the touching by the people 1,000 cows: so, if he went away, he 
was theessentialelement ; Wellhausen, would probably not trouble about 
Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft, vii. 33- asceticism. 
39. * KS. vii. 2. 15, &c. 
4 See Eggeling, SBE. xliv. p. xl. 7 BDS.i. 2.3.39; GDS. ii. 8, &c. 


6 CCS. xvi. 18.20; the expulsion was not in 


Chap. 19] Taboos 305 


of cases where the theory was worked out : in the case ! of the period of a year 
connected with the ceremony of cutting the beard of the youth, which is intro- 
duced by a ceremony comparable to the initiation to studentship and during 
which the carrying of a girdle, the living on alms, and so on are prescribed as 
ror a student, washing, combing the hair, cleaning the teeth, and washing the 
feet are forbidden. In the case of the four-month ceremonies,? it is a rule of 
perfection, at least, that the performer should not bathe until the final bath. 
The sense is clear, and throws light on the famous reference in the Aitareya 
Brahmana to the dirty condition of the ascetic, which is also echoed in the 
hymn of the Rigveda * regarding the inspired Muni. 

The case of the hair is analogous to, and closely connected with, that of the 
washing or refraining from washing the body. The Vedic domestic ritual lays 
stress on the cutting of the child’s hair once in early childhood, and then later 
for the youth when he has grown up: the hair is carefully cut, and after that 
was arranged in the characteristic manner in which the family wore its hair, 
this being a marked sign of differentiation among the Vedic families and one 
already recorded to us in the Rigveda ; the beard of the youth was also shorn.° 
The aim of the performance is expressly stated in the formulae accompanying - 
it to be the production of long life, and the giving of health and purity, and 
obviously it served also to mark the family connexion of the child or youth. 
That in the ceremony there was any idea of an offering whether to gods, or 
to demons, or to the Fathers ° is not indicated by anything in the ritual texts 
nor in the formulae used, and, if any such idea was ever present, it was not 
felt in Vedic times. There is indeed no obvious reason for distinguishing the 
action in these cases from the action in the cases of sacrifices. ’ The sacrificer 
before the new- and full-moon offerings has his hair cut, except the family knot, 
and his beard shaven, and even his nails pared: so the sacrificer in the case of 
the Diksa, and at the four-monthly offerings, and the motive expressed in 
these cases is the removal of the dead skin to make the body pure.’ The same 
principle of shaving was observed by the living after the death of a member of 
the family,® at the same time as the putting on of new garments, the renewal 
of the domestic fire, and the washing of their bodies. The same performances 
were applied as in all lands to the dead: ® perhaps we can say nothing more 
than that the feeling of impurity from contact with the dead was very strong, 
and required to be removed as vehemently as possible. 

On the other hand, as in the case of abstaining from washing, so we have 


1 GGS. iii. 1. 10 ff. logical Essays presented to E. B. 
ICS. Vie 21. Tylor, p. 805; Hillebrandt, Ritual- 
3 AB. vii. 13. litteratur, pp. 7, 8. For the soul in the 
x 136. ’ hair, see Hopkins, Origin of Religion, 
5 AGS. i. 17. 12,16; 18.5; GDS. xx. 5. pp. 116 ff. 


Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda', p. 426. 
CB iit, Vo 2s MSs iG. 
AGS, iv. 6. 4. 

AGS. iv. 1.163 AV. xix. 82:2: 


For Greek parallels see Cook, Zeus, i. 

23-5, 93. For peculiarities of arrange- 
ment of hair as characteristic of tribes 

and families cf. Ridgeway, Anthropo- 
20 [u.0.8. 31] 


cn 3 a 


306 Vedic Ritual [Part III 


instances in which the hair must not be cut at all. The newly wedded bride 
on the fourth day, before the consummation of the marriage is permitted, must 
be rubbed with an ointment from the remains of oblations up to the nails and 
the hair.1 The ascetic of the Rigveda wears long hair; the description of 
the attributes of asceticism in the Aitareya Brahmana include dirt, long hair, 
a girdle, and an antelope skin. In the period of a year before the shaving of 
the beard referred to above the hair may not be cut. In the royal consecration 
the sacrifice is followed by period of a year in which the consecrated may rub 
but not wash himself, shorten, but not cut off the hair.2. The reason for the 
usage is given with perfect distinctness by the Brahmana: the anointing has 
put the strength of the waters of anointing into his hair, and he would destroy 
the virtue thus engendered, if he cut off the hair. The same principle is applied 
to the animals of the sacrifice : the steed for the horse sacrifice must not, for 
the year in which it wanders free before its death, be allowed to bathe in 
water, and the manes of the horses in the realm should not be cut for a year 
after the royal consecration.? Naturally the end of the period of allowing 
the hair to grow is marked by a formal act of shaving: this is the case with 
the man consecrated by the Diksa, with the king at the end of the year of 
consecration; at the Samavartana ceremony, which ends the period of 
studentship, the hair, the beard, the hair on the body, and the nails are all 
carefully cut.* 

In a considerable number of cases we find that at certain times the 
intending sacrificer must abstain from sexual intercourse, must fast, or feed 
on certain specified foods alone, must sleep on the ground, and so on. The 
man who intends to establish the sacred fire must for the night before the per- 
formance lie awake in silence: ° thus he is said to secure purity and Tapas 
for his approach to the gods next day. For the day before the new- and full- 
moon sacrifices the sacrificer must be careful not to eat meat or have sexual 
intercourse; at evening he may eat wild plants and fruits, but nothing of what 
he is to offer next day; he must sleep on the ground with his wife for the 
night, and some even demand that the pair shall spend it in telling stories.® 

When the student is performing his period of studentship,’ he is forbidden 
intercourse, and a high bed: when he has been admitted to study ® by the 
solemn offering, he must stand silent for the rest of the day, and eat no salted 
food for the day. When he comes to a specially sacred part of his work of 


1 GGSonb6:; to Persian influence on Candragupta’s 
* LCS. ix. 2.18, 21; CB. v. 5. 3.1; KCS. court drawn but with little cogency ; 
xv. 8. 28. cf. Keith, JRAS. 1916, pp. 138-43. 


* KCS. xx. 2, 12, 18; LOGS. ix. 2.26. In ‘4 ApS. xiii. 28.16; CGS. iii, 1. 2. 
Persia we have an obscure record ‘* Ap(S. v. 8.1 ff. 
(Herodotos, ix. 110) of an annual hair ° Hillebrandt, Neu- und Vollmondsopfer, 
washing (?) by the King, with which pp. 3, 6, 14. 
Strabo’s (xv. 69) remark as to a 7 GGS.iii.i. 17 ff. 
similar Indian practice has been com- ‘* GGS., ii. 10. 45 ff. 
pared, and far-reaching conclusions as 


Chap. 19] Taboos 307 


learning, then he must shut his eyes, and in silence for a day and a night or 
three days eat nothing, the shutting of the eyes being no doubt in order not 
to be blinded by the excessive majesty of the work, which he has studied. 
Before he imparts such important knowledge to his pupil, the teacher himself 
for a day and a night must practise chastity, and eat no flesh.! In the offering 
of the Cabalihoma it is provided that the offerer must lie on the ground for 
twelve nights, speak as little as possible, observe chastity, and take only sweet 
milk.? The fasts are deemed by the Brahmanas to be the essence of Tapas,? or 
again the fasting before an offering is deemed courtesy to the gods, just as 
one does not eat before one’s guests.4. The former motive is very probably 
areal one: the use of hunger to produce states of ecstasy is well attested, but 
other reasons are possible: the motive of refraining from eating flesh is 
doubtless connected with the spirit, which is in the dead animal, and which 
may be dangerous, especially to a man undertaking a solemn rite. The 
refraining from salt, which is even extended by some authorities to cover the 
offering of any salted food to the gods, is a strange taboo which is very well 
known in many parts of the earth, and which in some way seems to stand 
in connexion with fertility : Oldenberg ° suggests that if it is not an inheritance 
from a time which knew no salt, as is very possible, the unfruitfulness of salt 
ground and of sea water suggested its evil character, but of that we have no 
adequate proof, and in point of fact salt passes in some measure as a sign of 
prosperity,® through its use for animals to lick. Other motives may be the 
danger of evil spirits entering the man who eats, seeing that at a festival such 
spirits will be present in large numbers ; the desire to secure that there will be 
enough food for the gods—which is paralleled by the Vedic politeness theory ; 
or the desire not to interfere with the full benefit to be obtained by the holy 
food, which is not expressed in any Vedic passage, but with which may be 
compared fasts ordered after consuming forbidden food until all trace of it 
has disappeared.’ In the case of sexual intercourse probably the same idea 
is at work as in the case of the loss of seed generally : the horse for the horse 
sacrifice is kept away from mares as well as from the water, and the motive 
appears clearly enough in the ritual and the formulae : § it is undesirable in 
this case as in the case of the Brahman student and the consecrated man to 
lose any strength whatever. Even laughter ® is regarded as loss of strength : 
the consecrated man must put his hand before his mouth to prevent the loss 
of his laughter, which is compared with light on the strength of the Rigveda,! 
by which laughter and lightning are already closely connected. 

In addition to these taboos there are others of more curious character. 


1 GGS. iii. 2.87 ; CGS. ii. 11. 6. * CBT xs SySel sy cbs. Oo lic dite LAs. 
2 Weber, Ind. Stud. v. 440 ff. 30; i1. 183; KQCS. xxy. 11, 21; AGS. 
"C5, 1x. 5. 1. 6; T1268 30 Valve Kile OF 

<OB.i.1. 1.8; ii. 1.4. 1,2. ®° TA. v.1.43 contrast TS. vi. 1.38. 8. 

° Rel. des Veda’, p. 414, n. 1. 10 Oldenberg, op. cit., p. 429. Forthelucky 
* OB. v. 2.1.16. sneeze (dskara), see PB. viii. 1.13; 2.2. 


7 ApDS. i. 9.27.3; GDS. xxiii. 23. 
20* 


308 Vedic Ritual [Part III 


When the ground is ploughed for a fire altar, there are sowed upon it seeds of 
every kind except one, and of that the sacrificer never tastes again in his life. 
If a man use a goat or Kuca grass as a fetish of the fire, then he must not 
eat either the goat or sit on Kuca grass ; 2 if a man takes his fire from the house 
of a wealthy man, he may not again eat in his house; at the Vajapeya the 
sacrificer is anointed, or deluged, with various libations, in preparing which 
all kinds of food are mixed with water, one only being excepted of which 
he never eats again.* The builder of the fire altar in bird form must not again 
eat a bird in his life,> and the same rule is laid down for the learner of the 
Jyestha Siman.® To see here traces of totemism is of course possible, but like 
all possibilities, which have no evidence to raise them into probabilities, not 
a very helpful mode of procedure. The case of the altar is clearly due to its 
bird form: the bird is invested with the holiness of Agni, and must not be 
eaten by a man who is closely connected with Agni, as is the builder of the 
fire altar. The borrowing of the same taboo by the learner of the Jyestha 
Saman must not mislead us: once a taboo starts, others easily follow. The 
idea that the taboos represent an agreement with spirits to abstain from one 
food, in return for being allowed to use others, is one which has no support of 
any kind in the Vedic religion.’ 

The silence taboo may be variously explained : possibly it may denote the 
desire to avoid the attacks of evil spirits who may enter the open mouth : 
retirement into solitude which is further reeommended may denote the same 
feeling, and the sleeping on the ground is interpreted by Oldenberg as a device 
for avoiding the attacks of such spirits, who will be misled by the change of 
couch. So also, he thinks, one of the causes of the abstinence from intercourse 
is the avoidance of attack by the demons whom such conduct deceives. It is 
possible, however, that in the case of sleeping on the ground another motive 
was at work, the desire to obtain the power which belongs to the earth spirit : 
we are reminded of the priests of Zeus at Dodona who slept on the ground. 

The fear of the spirits is of course an undoubted motive in the case of the 
constant taboo of anything connected with death. The teacher who desires to 
instruct his pupil in the secret texts which cannot be recited in the village 
must not see blood, a cemetery, nor certain beasts, which are said to be 
shaped like a corpse.® The pupil himself is to avoid the sight of a place of 
burning bodies or the bearers of such bodies ; he should not look into a well, 
nor climb a tree: 1° the first of these rules reminds us that the spirits dwell in 
the depths of the earth, that it is dangerous to see one’s own reflection in the 
water, and the second may refer to the part played by the tree as giving the 
coffin or covering for the body or ashes of the dead. Again the Snataka may 


1 CB. vii. 2.4.14; ef. GGS. iii. 2. 58. * GGS. iii. 2. 57. 

2 KCS. xxv. 4. 4 ff. 7 Oldenberg, Rel. des Veda, p. 416. 

3 ApS. v. 14. 2. 8’ Kretschmer, Gesch. d. griech. Spr., p. 87. 
‘ CB. v. 2.2.4; Weber, Vdjapeya, p. 36. * CGS sil 12.10 evils, 0. 


’ OB. x. 1.4.18. 10 CGS. iv. 12. 27. ff. 


Chap. 19] Taboos 309 


not sit directly on the bare earth, which may be thus explained or by the fear 
of his losing his holiness by contact with earth... He may not go by evening to 
another village or by any but the main road, probably lest he meet evil 
spirits.2. There are also innumerable other taboos, connected not only with 
death but with lying-in women, and women in their courses, who are regarded 
as specially full of danger by many peoples, an idea which is often to be 
traced to the blood taboo.? Of special frequence is the occurrence of taboo 
against the use of vessels of clay: the consecrated man must not use such a 
vessel for his milk food, the butter used at the Taniinaptra service must not be 
covered by such a vessel, the learner of the Jyestha SAaman must not eat or 
drink from such an utensil, the milk for the new-moon offering must not be 
covered in this way, and so on.* The vessel used when certain secret texts are 
recited must be of metal.®> In these cases the Brahmanas show clearly that 
the sense of the connexion of the earth with the dead was the cause of the 
objection. 

On the other hand there are instances in which the aim of man is pre- 
cisely the opposite from that seen in the working of taboos: he desired to 
come into the closest possible relations with the object which he desires to 
provide. Thus in the case of the Cakvari verses which are already alluded to 
in the Rigveda the rules for the conduct of the pupil who desires to study the 
verses are of a peculiar nature. He is required to follow certain rules for a 
period of from twelve years to a year—in fixing lengths of courses the 
Brahmans are always accommodating—which include the duty of touching 
water thrice daily, wearing black garments, eating black food, exposing him- 
self uncovered to the rain : he must not cross flowing water nor save in case of 
the greatest need go on a ship, because the strength of the Cakvari rests in the 
waters. At the end, when he has learned to sing the verses, he must plunge 
his hands in water in which vegetables are placed. The whole performance 
has only one possible meaning: it is a Brahmanized version of a rain spell. 
Moreover, the ordinary student is encouraged to expose himself to the rain : 7 
the holy youth is not to shrink from the holy element. The same sort of 
observance in the case of the sun is laid down for students of the Samaveda : ® 
they are not to cover themselves from the sun with more than a single garment, 
and not to allow anything save trees to get between them and the sun. The 
performer of the Pravargya ® ceremony is forbidden to cover himself in the 
sun, or to defile it by performing before it any of the acts of nature: 1° at 


a CGS. iv. 12: 21, 6 PB. xii. 18.14); TS.ii. 2.8.53 GGS-i1.2. 
2 -GGS. iii. 5, 32. 7 PGS. ii. 7.11; GGS.iii.5.11. Cf. Usener, 
’ Reinach, Cultes, Mythes et Religions, i. Archiv f. Religionswissenschaft, vii. 285. 


162 ff. ; Frazer, Taboo, pp.145 ff. This * GGS. iii. 1. 31 ff. 
work containsexamples ofallthekinds ° CB. xiv. 1.1.33. 


of Vedic taboos. © Cf. the rule for the Brahman student, CB. 
“ KOS. vii. 4. 83; viii.2.1; GGS. iii. 2. 60, xiv. 1. 2. 88; AV. xiii. 1. 56. (with 
61, &c. Lanman’s note); Hes. op.725; Brunn- 


GGS. ili. 2. 85 ; PGS.i. 3. 5. hofer, Arische Urzeit, pp. 324, 325. 


310 Vedic Ritual [Part III 


night he must make a light, and eat by it, thus creating for himself a present- 
ment of the sun. The performer of the second form of consecration at the 
Soma offering takes nothing save hot milk in the effort to make complete the 
state of heat which the performer of the first consecration aimed at.1 

It is of interest to mention in conclusion the conjecture put forward by 
Weber ? that the word taboo as tdbuva was actually found in the Atharvaveda ;? 
it is clear that such a suggestion could not possibly be made good, and the idea 
has been rejected with almost entire unanimity by scholars. 


§4. The Forms of Prayer 


The Rigveda shows quite clearly that the conception of prayer for aid to 
a god without the performance of any sacrifice was quite natural and intelli- 
gible. The heroes of its narratives of the deeds of the Acvins in special seem 
to have been specially eager in their prayers for the aid they desired. But 
the priests were, from the earliest period of the later Samhitas and probably 
earlier, ready to find the exact formulae with which the deity should be 
addressed in every stage of trouble, and, what was still more important, to 
lay down the nature of the necessary offering. Hence we find even in the 
Taittiriya Samhita ° an elaborate account of the different offerings to be made 
to the gods for a vast variety of cases of special desires : the verses used by the 
priests for the Anuvakyds and Yajyds are taken from the Rigveda, many 
however in a very far from natural way, showing that the only interest of the 
composers of these lists of offerings was to find some verse, which by connexion 
of sound or sense might be thought appropriate. On the other hand the ritual 
still here and there allows the offering of prayers which were not immediately 
dictated by the necessity of accompanying libations: thus in the Agnistoma 
the morning litany, the Prataranuvaka with its address to Agni, to the Dawn, 
and to the Acvins is independent of any actual libations. In the domestic ® 
ritual the rule is laid down that the student is to perform the devotion to the 
twilight, both night and morning in the wood: after the twilight is over, he 
has to repeat the three sacred words Bhih, Bhuvah, and Svar, and the 
Savitri verse: the sacred words denote, the first earth, the third heaven, but 
the intermediate expression has no obvious relation to the intermediate space, 
save in so far as it may be a compound, as suggested by Oldenberg,’ of the two 
elements of the first and third words. In another form of ritual the prayer is 
connected not with a libation, but with a ceremonial reverence to the fire, the 


1 Weber, Ind. Stud. x. 363. Contra, Hauer, Die Anfdnge der Yoga- 
* SBA. 1896, pp. 681 ff., 873 ff. (with praxis im alten Indien, p. 63. 
remarks of Jacobi, E. Kuhn, and ‘ ii.1.1ff. Thereisa considerable similarity 
Bendall); cf. Ind, Stud. xviii. 215 ; in many of the magic rites of the 
Bloomfield, Atharvaveda, p. 61. Kaucika Sitra as is pointed out by 
* y.13.10. For other strange terms in this Caland (Altindisches Zauberritual, p. 
hymn, cf. Tilak, Bhandarkar Comm. viii). 
Vol., pp. 27 ff. See also App. G. 8 CGS. ii. 9. 


4 Hillebrandt, Rituallitteratur, p. 171. 7 Rel. des Veda?, p. 431, n. 4, 


Chap. 19] The Forms of Prayer 311 


Upasthana, where by the mention of his devotion to the fire the votary intends, 
in the naive conception of the Brahmanas, to call the attention of the god to 
the fact of his existence and doubtless also of his needs.1 

In the main the rule is observed that the prayers, which celebrate the 
actions of the gods and invoke their aid, are in verse, while the prose is 
restricted to the formulae, which accompany each act of the sacrifice and in 
special each offering as it is made. But there are here and there prose prayers 
spoken by the Adhvaryu, as at the new- and full-moon offering and at the horse 
sacrifice. But, whatever the type of the prayer, the result is the same: the 
priest prays that the sacrificer—who may of course be himself—shall have 
long life, riches, especially in cattle and horses, in chariots and gold, sons in 
abundance, freedom from disease, success over his enemy, and prosperity in 
general; he also prays that his enemies may be brought to ruin.? It is 
undeniable that the prayers are nearly always for material objects, and that 
the occasional expressions of desire for spiritual goods are in the extreme 
exceptional: here and there we find admissions of sin and desire to be at 
friendship with the gods, especially Varuna, but that there is much ethical 
content in the hymns generally it would be absurd to assert. The real object 
of the hymn is to please the god by the references to his past deeds and his 
power, and thus induce him to manifest again the strength of his right arm 
for the benefit of his servants. The hymns often remind the god of their 
ancestral connexion, and in the pride of their production and of the value 
which the gods must attach to them are extremely naive. It is wholly im- 
possible to doubt that, if the Adhvaryu really thought that the acts of the 
sacrifice and the actual offerings were what mattered, his view was not in the 
least shared by the Hotr, who was of opinion that his perfectly constructed 
hymns would give the god the greatest possible amount of pleasure. It is a 
question of interest, but one which cannot be answered, how it came about that 
this love of poetry died out, after it must have flourished for some centuries. 
The Brahmana period is clearly a time when the priests are content in the 
main to use the traditional poetry, and, if they composed, to base their com- 
positions very closely on the traditional models. The pride of the Vedic poets 
in their own powers is perfectly evidenced, when they claim that their hymns 
strengthen Indra for the slaying of Vrtra or that through the prayers the 
steeds are yoked to the chariot of the god. Here as everywhere the tendency 
of the sacrifice to pass into magic is illustrated: the prayer which is really 
essentially free from magic is at last turned by the pride of its composers into 
nothing but a spell. 


ee CBslnos4. i. pp. 163 ff.), stands or falls with the view 
* The theory that the spell precedes prayer, that magic precedes religion. On the 
which is widely held (Meyer, Gesch. d. view here taken that they are inde- 
Alt I.ii. pp. 870, 871 ; Usener, Archiv pendent, prayer is not originally a 
f. Religionswissenschaft, vii. 15 ff. ; spell; cf. Bloomfield, Religion of the 
Feist, Kultur der Indogermanen, pp. 349 Veda, pp. 205 ff, ; Jevons, Idea of God, 


ff.; ef. Farnell, Evolution of Religion, pp. 108 ff.; Heiler, Das Gebet (1921). 


312 Vedic Ritual [Part Il 


The Brahmanas and the ritual! give advice to the priest how to make use 
of the service for ends not openly expressed. If the ritual contain in a liturgy 
the word ‘ possessing heroic sons’, he has but to think of the wife of the 
sacrificer, and he will bring it about thathe has a strong son: the word 
‘embryo’ if thought on will bring her fertility. But, on the other hand, the 
power can be used for evil as effectively : if the priest but think of the enemy 
whom he hates, when he takes up the pressing stone in his hand, he can over- 
throw the enemy: the pressing stone thus becomes a weapon to slay him.? 
Of these puerilities the Brahmanas are never tired,® and this attitude of mind 
must be accepted as a fundamental fact of their mental outlook. 


1 CB. iii.9.4.17; CCS.iv.8.4.3; v. 9.19; Pp. 185 SES. one CE. Gadok0. 
14.12, &c. Thehighest pitch of absur- 7? CB. iii. 9.4.17; cf. PB. ii. 18.2; vi. 5. 
dity is perhaps reached in the narrative 188/652 2) MS. ie dena. O S71 OAOns 
how by the error in placing an accent li. 1.9, &c. 3 AB.iii. 352 ff. ; 6.1 ff. 


a foe of Indra ruined himself and not * TS. vi. 4. 4. 3 (device to secure women’s 
Indra; Keith, Taittirtya Samhita, i. love); MS.iv.5.7; (B.i. 4, 8.11 ff. 











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